Rebuking President Donald Trump's claims Democrats have become an "anti-Jewish party," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., backhandedly thanked the president for "cementing" the relationship between his party and his Jewish community.
"Well, I hate to even dignify those remarks, but look, it's not the Democratic Party that believes that there are good people on both sides of a Nazi rally," Rep. Schiff told CNN's "State of the Union." "There's just one party and one party leader who believes that, and that's Donald Trump.
"If there's anything that is likely to cement the relationship between the Democratic Party and the Jewish community, it's the presidency of Donald Trump. The lack of character and values that are certainly inconsistent with Jewish values, I think, are only consolidating support in the Jewish community."
Rep. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been leading the investigative efforts against President Trump and added a pin of blame on the president for hate-related violence.
"I think the president needs to look inward when it comes to the rise of anti-Semitism in the country and his own actions and his own words and how that may fuel some of the rise in hate that we see," Schiff told CNN's Jake Tapper.
When Tapper pressed Schiff on the hate-related comments from members of his own party, the Democrat deflected back to blame on the president.
"Yes there are isolated comments by members of our caucus that I have strongly condemned as being anti-Semitic," Schiff told Tapper. "But it's one thing when you have a few members who make comments, and it's another when the president of the United States makes comments like he did about Charlottesville. There's quite a difference.
"I’m very proud of our leadership and its condemnation of anti-Semitism. We will continue to speak out, we'll continue to take action to try to combat this scourge. But I don't think the president is helping by trying to divide us this way."