Massie pushes back on Rogers over claim young people are ‘against the Jews’

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Monday went after former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who is running for Senate in Michigan, over his claims that more young people are “against the Jews.”

In an appearance on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” broadcast Sunday , Rogers said that “the next generation of kids thinks it’s really cool to be against the Jews.”

“What are we doing? This sounds like 1933. It doesn’t sound like today, and that’s not the America I wore the uniform to defend, and that’s not the America I want to live in. So, we’re going to have to have conversations, and some of them are going to be really hard,” he added.

Massie shot back at Rogers over his comments in a post on the social platform X Monday.

“This is false and dangerous rhetoric from Mike Rogers: ‘The next generation of kids thinks it’s really cool to be against the Jews,’” Massie said in his post. “No Mike, the next generation and my generation and the generations in between are against funding wars in the Middle East.”

“Mike and others do a great disservice to Jewish people when they imply that opposition to Netanyahu’s wars is equivalent to antisemitism,” he added.

Massie has led a push in Congress to cut off U.S. aid to Israel, an issue that has gained steam amid Israel’s war in Gaza.

A growing cohort of Democrats have labeled Israel’s actions in that war, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, as “genocide” — including Rogers’s Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who lost to El-Sayed in the primary, cited the Democrats’ positions on Israel in her decision to endorse Rogers over the weekend.

Earlier this year, House Democrats split almost evenly on an amendment to stop U.S. aid to Israel, signaling how far the party has shifted on the relationship. Massie spearheaded that amendment, which failed in a 104-314 vote, with Massie as the lone Republican yes vote.

Netanyahu is currently locked in a fight for his political survival after Israeli elections last month. While Netanyahu’s coalition received the most votes, he came up short of a clear majority, meaning his leading opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, may have the first chance to form a government.

The Hill has reached out to Rogers’s campaign for comment.