JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg slammed for Abdul El-Sayed criticism
Jack Schlossberg claimed that his grandfather, President Kennedy, ‘ran on policy and took questions on religion’
Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former President Kennedy, has been slammed online for his remarks about U.S. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed.
El-Sayed, who is set to become the first Muslim American elected to the U.S. Senate, swept to victory in Michigan last week when the country headed to the polls for the midterm elections.
On the campaign trail, El-Sayed frequently compared skepticism around his own faith to anxieties around Kennedy’s Catholic faith amid the latter’s presidential campaign.
However, political commentator Schlossberg took aim at El-Sayed’s invocation of Kennedy in a pointed social media post uploaded late on Sunday.
“Senator-elect El Sayed (sic) invoked JFK’s faith to compare his election to that of the first Catholic president,” Schlossberg wrote on X. “JFK ran on policy and took questions on religion. Abdul did the opposite.”
Before his election, Kennedy had been met with much skepticism over the fact that he could become the United States’ first Catholic president.
“I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” he famously said. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.”
El-Sayed seemingly referenced Kennedy’s historic quote in his own campaign, telling an audience member at a town hall: “I’m not running to be a Muslim senator. I’m running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim.”
Also, in a post on Facebook, El-Sayed wrote: “When JFK ran, they said the country would never elect a Catholic president.”
Schlossberg’s criticism of El-Sayed’s repeated references to Kennedy has sparked a fierce social media backlash, with journalist and columnist Laura Bassett writing: “Genuinely, what the f*** are you talking about?”
Mehdi Hasan, founder of media outlet Zeteo, also criticized Schlossberg and took a swipe at his loss in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District back in June.
“This guy is a total bigot. Thank God he lost his primary,” Hasan wrote.
Shortly before his post about El-Sayed, Schlossberg had hit out at Hasan over the latter’s criticism of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Kennedy scion accused Hasan of “working hard to stop the first-ever black Speaker.”
Journalist David Weigel also criticized Schlossberg over his remark about El-Sayed.
“Jack, how’s freshman orientation going? Have you seen Abdul at the meetings? Maybe you could talk it out,” Weigel wrote.
The Independent has contacted both Schlossberg and El-Sayed for comment.
Schlossberg is infamous for his, at times, chaotic social media usage, which has allowed him to amass a large following of Gen-Z and millennial fans.
In posts to X, he has suggested that The New York Times “does not have a right to exist”; claimed that Cheryl Hines - the wife of his cousin and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - looks “dehydrated”; asked now-defeated Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy to be his father; and proclaimed his love for musicians Role Model and Sam Smith.
Speaking to Vanity Fairin May, Schlossberg explained the strategy behind his chaotic social media style.
“If I tweet something or whatever that’s, that some find offensive or, or vulgar, I’m holding up a mirror right back to them and saying, ‘Look what the president tweets every single day,’” he said.