WH: Obama wasn’t downplaying anti-Semitism

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But later on Tuesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest tweeted the administration’s view — expressed many times in the attack’s aftermath — was that it was “motivated by anti-Semitism.”

“I believe the point that the President was trying to make is that these individuals were not specifically targeted,” Earnest told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “These were individuals who happened to randomly be in this deli and were shot while they were there. And that is the point that the president was making.”

Earnest added later, “There were people other than just Jews who were in that deli.”

CNN