Elizabeth Warren, the U.S. senator sometimes referred to as "Pocahontas," has finally found a limit to her tolerance for Nazi-adjacent Democrats. She eagerly backed Graham Platner, who had a Nazi skull tattooed on his chest and a history of palling around with antisemitic influencers. "That's my kind of man," Warren said while sharing a stage with Platner in April. "That is a man who not only has the values, but a man who believes in accountability." She was shocked, shocked, to learn he had been credibly accused of rape. (It's never the obvious scumbags you suspect.)
Days after Platner dropped out, Warren endorsed Abdul El-Sayed for U.S. Senate in Michigan. The candidate has no direct Nazi affiliations, but he was recently endorsed by a group whose leader has praised the "freedom fighters" of Hamas and called for Israeli Jews to be sent "back to Poland." Last month, El-Sayed appeared on stage with a Muslim cleric who applauded the October 7 terrorist attack and said the Holocaust death toll "has been exaggerated."
These are some of the Nazi-adjacent behaviors Warren finds acceptable. Nevertheless, she didn't feel comfortable sharing a stage with a Democratic fundraiser best known for honoring her Nazi grandfather's military service on Veterans Day.
Jewish Insider reports that Warren was scheduled to speak this weekend at an El-Sayed fundraiser hosted by Kelly Neumann, a Michigan-based personal injury lawyer. Warren appears to have canceled that appearance after the publication reached out for comment. El-Sayed's campaign said the senator was never scheduled to speak at the fundraiser and blamed a "clerical error" for the mix-up.
Neumann offered a different, somewhat contradictory explanation. "Unfortunately, our originally scheduled special guests [sic] flight will no longer get her to the event on time," she wrote on Instagram. Warren's office declined to comment.
Who is Kelly Neumann? She's a prolific Democratic fundraiser and an even more prolific social media poster. Her Instagram feed is littered with photos of herself posing with prominent Democrats such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Whitmer, and Gavin Newsom, among others. She served as finance co-chair of Mallory McMorrow's U.S. Senate campaign, then backed El-Sayed after McMorrow dropped out.
In January, the Washington Free Beacon and others reported on the unusual (and since-deleted) Facebook post Neumann published on Veterans Day in 2024. She recounted the "interesting story" of how her grandfather, Albert Neumann, served "on the German side" in World Wars I and II before fleeing to Brazil after the Nazis lost.
"He was one of the first people in my life that accepted me as gay when I was nervous and scared," Neumann wrote. "His story is a true testament that people can change and love indeed can win."
The post included several photos of Neumann's beloved "Opa" posing in what appears to be a Nazi uniform.
Neumann eventually apologized "to anyone who was hurt" by her bizarre Veterans Day tribute to man who fought for Adolf Hitler against the Allies. In addition to slaughtering 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, the Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of around 250,000 American soldiers during World War II. "To be clear," Neumann wrote on Facebook in March, "my grandfather was a german soldier, not a nazi."
According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it is a "myth" to suggest that German soldiers were separate from the Nazi regime and therefore non-complicit in Hitler's atrocities.
Several weeks after posting her apology, Neumann threatened to take legal action against the Free Beacon unless we retracted our "false and defamatory" story about her Nazi grandfather who served in Hitler's army. The threat came in the form of a letter from Neumann's attorney, Eugenie B. Eardley, a personal injury lawyer who calls herself the "First Lady of Law." According to her website, Eardley is "seriously serious about the law."
Oddly enough, Eardley's threatening letter was profoundly unserious. She argued the Free Beacon had invaded her client's privacy—by reporting on a publicly available Facebook post—because Neumann had honored the Nazi soldier "in her private capacity as a granddaughter," whatever that means. Eardley went on to falsely accuse the Free Beacon of describing Neumann's grandfather as a member of the SS and claimed our story was based on a tip from an ally of Rep. Haley Stevens (D., Mich.), who is also running for U.S. Senate. That's not true, either.
Eardley reiterated Neumann's claim that her grandfather was "a German soldier only, not a member of the Nazi Party," alleging independent verification from the German government. The attached email correspondence from the Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr confirmed that Albert Neumann served in the Wehrmacht under Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler but offered no evidence concerning his Nazi Party affiliation.
Through her attorney, Neumann alleged that the Free Beacon's article had inflicted "substantial reputation injury" to the extent that she had become "a political outcast." Less than a week before sending the letter, Neumann bragged on Instagram about sitting "front and center" at the Michigan Democratic Women's Caucus Legacy Luncheon and meeting Kamala Harris "for the second time." As excruciating as that sounds, it doesn't really help her case.
Warren, meanwhile, is still scheduled to speak at a rally for El-Sayed on Saturday. "He's fighting for every single American to have affordable, high-quality health care," the senator said in her endorsement video. She said more or less the same thing about Luigi Mangione after he (allegedly) gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024.
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," Warren said. "This is a warning."
