A Republican political operative who’s working for Staten Island borough president apologized on Tuesday after she drew widespread condemnation for saying “Heil Hitler” throughout a protest towards coronavirus restrictions.
The politician, Leticia Remauro, made the comment as she was recording a video of herself throughout a protest on Dec. 2 exterior Mac’s Public Home, a tavern in Staten Island that has grow to be a rallying level towards virus restrictions. The video drew consideration after it was despatched to a reporter with NY1, who shared it on Twitter on Monday evening.
Within the video, Ms. Remauro expresses help for Mac’s and different small companies.
She then pans to a line of officers exterior the tavern, saying that she is there to “rise up for our proper, the best to pay taxes in order that we will pay the salaries of those good women and men, who sure are solely doing their job, however not for nothing, generally you have to say ‘Heil Hitler,’ not a good suggestion to ship me right here, we’re not going to do it.”
Ms. Remauro has been concerned in Staten Island politics for some 30 years. In 2000, she headed up the marketing campaign of George W. Bush in New York, and her advertising and marketing agency was just lately employed by the congressional marketing campaign of Nicole Malliotakis, who unseated a Democrat in November with the assistance of President Trump.
The video, which emerged on Monday, drew widespread outrage on social media from politicians and the general public, with many individuals calling for Ms. Remauro to renounce her candidacy for borough president. Some individuals additionally known as on Ms. Malliotakis to sentence Ms. Remauro’s phrases.
In a put up on Twitter on Tuesday, she stated her phrases had been a “VERY BAD ANALOGY likening the actions of the de Blasio & Cuomo towards small companies to these of a Nazi dictator.”
In an emailed assertion on Tuesday, Ms. Remauro stated there was “by no means an acceptable comparability to be made” to Nazi Germany or Hitler.
“What I stated will not be reflective of something I really feel or take into consideration the horrors of the holocaust or the enduring trauma impacting survivors and subsequent generations, or the very important eternally necessity of holocaust schooling,” Ms. Remauro stated.
Ms. Remauro lists herself on LinkedIn because the president and chief government of the Von Company, a advertising and marketing and public relations agency. In response to information from the Federal Election Fee, Ms. Malliotakis’s congressional marketing campaign paid the Von Company $90,158.98 for media consulting from 2019 by 2020.
Ms. Remauro’s companion on the Von Company dealt with promoting on social media for the marketing campaign, in line with Ms. Malliotakis’s congressional workplace. Ms. Remauro additionally labored for six months on Ms. Malliotakis’s unsuccessful mayoral marketing campaign in 2017.
Ms. Malliotakis didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. However in her personal post on Twitter, she condemned Ms. Remauro’s phrases as “stunning and mistaken.”
“At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise throughout our metropolis and particularly on Staten Island, there isn’t any excuse for such phrases being uttered,” she stated.
The Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group, reported a report variety of anti-Semitic incidents in america in 2019, greater than in any 12 months because the group started protecting observe 4 a long time in the past.
The emergence of the video got here days after a violent mob supporting Mr. Trump broke into the U.S. Capitol, drawing heightened scrutiny of neo-Nazis and different white supremacists who had been a part of the riot and have supported the president. Images from final Wednesday’s riot present a person parading the Accomplice flag by the Capitol, and one other carrying a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the phrases “Camp Auschwitz.”
Social media posts from Ms. Remauro counsel she was current in Washington final week the place individuals broke into the Capitol constructing. However she informed The New York Submit that she had been in her resort room in the course of the rioting and had not participated.
In a tweet in September, Ms. Remauro stated that “there will probably be no peaceable inauguration,” irrespective of the winner, and blamed Antifa.
“This isn’t about eliminating Trump its about bringing down America,” she stated.
In response to her marketing campaign biography, she served as a group liaison to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki, and labored on a range program for Goldman Sachs. She has additionally been the chair of the Staten Island Republican Get together.
Along with working for borough president, Ms. Remauro was till just lately the chair of the board of the Staten Island Hebrew Public Constitution Faculty, in line with the varsity’s web site. Jonathan Rosenberg, the president and chief government of the varsity, stated Ms. Remauro had provided her resignation on Monday evening, and the varsity accepted it.
She can be the secretary of the Staten Island Downtown Alliance, a enterprise advocacy group.
Ms. Remauro has posted a number of movies in current months in regards to the challenges companies face due to the pandemic.
In a video she posted on Fb in December, she stated, “I’ve no phrases besides I don’t really feel like I reside in America anymore.”
“I really feel like we reside in another communist nation,” Ms. Remauro stated.
Azi Paybarah contributed reporting.