New York Socialist Candidate Lied About Immigration Status, Religion, and More

Earlier in the month, a Republican running for Florida’s House of Representatives, Melissa Howard, was caught lying about having graduated college. She even went as far as to fake a diploma, which she posted to “prove” she was, in fact, a graduate. The college later confirmed there was no record of her graduating.

The story received no shortage of media coverage for what was a State-level race, and Howard ended up dropping out of the race as a result of the controversy.

I bring that up only to illustrate a media double standard – in that a socialist candidate running for the New York State Senate was caught lying about far more than her level of education, and is facing zero consequences. In fact, you wouldn’t have seen the story receive one second of airtime on television.

Enter: Julia Salazar. While a Democratic-Socialist today, Salazar was a right-wing evangelical zionist when she attended Columbia University and headed the school’s pro-life group. She even appeared on Glenn Beck’s show once back in 2012.

And now she’s a left-wing diehard. Of course, we don’t know if her Damascus moment was legitimate, or opportunistic. While it’s no shocker that someone could change their beliefs over a six-year period, especially someone as young as Salazar, her politics wouldn’t be the first thing she lied about.

An explosive piece in Tablet Magazine found that a handful of biographical details Salazar claims are bogus.

Salazar has claimed on numerous occasions, both on her campaign website and during speeches, that she’s a Columbian immigrant. Salazar was born in Miami.

Salazar has claimed to be a Jewish anti-Zionist. She’s a Christian, and there’s no evidence of Jewish ancestry on her mother’s side (only her father’s, according to her). Jewish lineage is only passed down through the mother. However, Salazar’s brother Alex told Tablet that “there was nobody in our immediate family who was Jewish … my father was not Jewish, we were not raised Jewish.”

In response to the former claim, Salazar said that she never claimed to be an immigrant, which is verifiably false.

As for her alleged Jewish identity, as the Times of Israel reported, Salazar now claims to have converted to Judaism in 2012, which is certainly an interesting defense. She was raised in a Christian household, so I guess we’re to believe she just woke up one day and decided she didn’t believe the second half of the Bible? “I went through a conversion process with a Reform rabbi at [Columbia-Barnard] Hillel in 2012” she explained. “…Anyway, I felt Jewish, I was committed to Judaism and remain committed to Judaism, and I’ve never demanded that anyone else accept my Judaism nor have I sought to somehow use it to my benefit.”

It should go without saying that conversation from Christianity to Judaism is a practically non-existent phenomenon. And before her move to the Left, Salazar claimed to be both a Christian (religiously) and Jewish (ethnically). Now she’s treating her “Jewish” identity as a religious, not ethnic one.

The aforementioned Tablet article also noted that Salazar’s transformation from a right-wing Jewish evangelical into a left-wing socialist anti-Zionist Jew occurred in just a matter of months, which should cause one to be suspicious of just how sincere the transformation was.

I’ve changed some of my positions before too – but it was on one policy position at a time, not a complete overhaul of my ideology. As ironic as it would be if Salazar was more ideologically similar to myself than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the kind of person who can change their beliefs (or pretend to change them) on a dime doesn’t deserve support for anyone.

If someone like Rachel Dolezal got savaged for lying about her race, why isn’t Salazar being treated the same by the media for lying about her religion, ethnicity, and immigration status?