The Arizona Capitol building.
The president of the Arizona Senate punished a fellow Republican who used taxpayer-funded resources to appear on a talk show hosted by an anti-Semitic, far-right personality.
The Arizona Mirror reported that Sen. Anthony Kern (R-Glendale) used Senate video equipment to appear on the Stew Peters Show last week to criticize a drag story hour hosted by Democrats in the Arizona House last month.
Peters, who is called an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist” by the Anti-Defamation League, has used his show and social media accounts to post anti-Semitic tropes and praise Nazis, including book burnings in Nazi Germany.
“We have to identify who the real enemy is,” Peters says during the intro to his show, which features flashing images depicting anti-Semitic caricatures of Jewish men.
According to a statement from a Senate spokeswoman, Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) revoked Kern’s ability to use the Senate’s broadcasting equipment after his appearance on Peters’ show.
“The Senate President does not approve of how the Senator chose to use legislative broadcast resources last week, and as a result, his privileges to use those resources for future interviews have been revoked,” according to the statement.
Kern, who’s running for Congress in the West Valley, did not respond to a request for comment.
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