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WATCH: D.C. Councilman Says Rothschild Family Controls The Weather

A lawmaker in Washington, D.C. reacted to a local snowstorm on Friday by posting a video sharing a conspiracy theory that a Jewish family controls the weather.

Trayon White, Sr., a 33-year-old Democrat who began serving on the D.C. Council last year, posted a short video on his Facebook page narrating from his car as snow falls on the streets.

“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

The Rothschild family, a European banking dynasty of Jewish origins, has been the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories for generations alleging that they and other Jews help control the world. Many of the conspiracies center on control of the financial system, but some claim that they use advanced technology to create natural disasters.

“This kind of anti-Semitism is unacceptable in any public official,” Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Temple Micah in D.C. told The Washington Post. “This so diminishes what America is about and adds to the oppressive feeling going on in the country right now. We all have to be better. Public officials have to learn not to say the first ignorant thing that comes into their head.”

White told the Post that he was surprised that the video could be construed as anti-Semitic. When asked to clarify what he meant, he responded, “The video says what it says.”

Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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