By Rob Tornoe, Staff Writer

A “furious” Jake Tapper blasted CNN and his own show, The Lead, for displaying a phrase on Monday night’s show that outraged many viewers who claimed on social media the program was normalizing anti-Semitic comments.

During the segment, guest host Jim Sciutto was joined by RealClearPolitics’ RebeccaBerg and the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser. The segment centered around Donald Trump’s apparent unwillingness to distance himself from his blatantly racist and Nazi-sympathizing supporters, often characterized as the “alt-right.”

The chyron, which read, “Alt-right founder questions if Jews are people,” appeared at the bottom of the screen during the entire three-minute segment.

It seemed to be an attempt at summing up a quote made by white nationalist Richard Spencer, who railed against Jews, quoted Nazi propaganda, and said America belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” at a rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, according to the New York Times.

During the rally, which ended with shouts of, “Heil the people! Heil victory,” Spencer suggested the news media were protecting Jewish interests when he declared, “One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” referring to a Jewish fable about a clay figure brought to life by magic to protect people of Jewish faith.

Tapper, who grew up in Queen Village and Lower Merion, is on vacation this week for Thanksgiving, but that didn’t stop him from immediately responding to critics on Twitter, telling them he was “furious” and that the text in the banner was “unacceptable.”

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