DCCC Chairman “Condemns” DCCC’s Attacks on Iraq War Veteran

In case you missed it, after being shamed for two daysby the press and the NRCC for calling Iraq War veteran Lee Zeldin a “coward,” last night DCCC Chairman Steve Israel and Zeldin’s opponent Tim Bishop finally stopped hiding – sort of. Israel’s spokesperson said the following to Newsday:

“Rep. Israel was not shown the comments used to describe Iraq War veteran Lee Zeldin before they were sent out by DCCC staffers. He not only disagrees with these comments, but strongly condemns them,” said his aide Samantha Slater.

 Likewise, Bishop’s spokesperson also threw the DCCC under the bus. Read the full article here.

So one would think that if the Chairman of the DCCC is condemning the attack, the DCCC would have the sense to take the attack down from their website and remove the offensive tweets from their spokesman’s twitter feed. One would be incorrect. As of 1:44 pm today, the attack was still on the DCCC website and the tweets had not been deleted.

So either Israel’s apology was nothing more than a bogus attempt to kill a bad story, or his staff at the DCCC has completely tuned him out.

NRCC Comment: “Steve Israel needs to put his money where his mouth is and demand that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, of which he is chairman, immediately remove from its website and twitter feeds the ‘cowardly’ attacks on Iraq War veteran Lee Zeldin’s character. He should also require the DCCC to issue a formal apology to Zeldin and any other veterans offended by its crass attack. Anything less demonstrates that Israel’s ‘apology’ was an empty one given solely to put an end to his terrible week.”– NRCC Spokesman Ian Prior