Ex-Obama Official Speaks Out After Anti-Muslim Rant Goes Viral

A former Obama administration official who was captured going on an anti-Muslim rant in viral videos has broken his silence on the exchange.

Stuart Seldowitz, a one-time political adviser to the Obama administration and former deputy director of the State Department's Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, said he has not seen any of the viral clips but regrets what he said to the halal cart vendor, according to The New York Times.

"I got rather upset and I've said things to him, that in retrospect, I probably regret," he told the newspaper. "Instead of focusing in on him and what he said, I expanded into insulting his religion and so on."

The U.S. is experiencing an "unprecedented" uptick in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias incidents since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This comes as reports of antisemitic incidents across the country have spiked to "historic levels," FBI Director Christopher Wray said last month.

Seldowitz was recorded in several videos that have circulated on social media. The former official is heard telling an Egyptian-born vendor in Manhattan that the Islamic prophet Muhammad is a "rapist" and suggesting that the killing of 4,000 Palestinian children in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war "wasn't enough."

The vendor is heard repeatedly asking Seldowitz to leave, telling him he doesn't speak English. In response, Seldowitz calls the vendor "ignorant" for not speaking English and suggests he learn the language, telling him, "It'll help you when they deport you back to Egypt."

In the interview with the Times, Seldowitz said the exchange became fiery when the vendor expressed support for Hamas, although that was not captured in any of the videos that have circulated, the newspaper said.

Seldowitz insisted that he was not Islamophobic, saying, "I have many people who are Muslims and Arabs and so on who know me very well and who know that I'm not prejudiced against them."

However, the managing director of the Street Vendor Project, an advocacy group representing vendors across New York City, said the incident captured on film was not a one-off encounter. Mohamed Attia told CNN on Tuesday that the vendor said Seldowitz has been tormenting his cart for two weeks.

Lobbying company Gotham Government Relations, whom Seldowitz had previously worked with, severed all ties with him in the wake of the video's release, calling his actions "vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm."

The company's president also told the Times that it would offer pro-bono legal services to the vendor and that "Islamophobia and antisemitism have no place in our world and must be eradicated."

A recent Siena College Research Institute poll found that 62 percent of New York City residents say Muslims face Islamophobia in the city, with 60 percent saying the level has increased since the war began.

In the survey, 73 percent said they believed Jewish people were experiencing antisemitism, with 75 percent saying they believed those incidents had escalated over the same period.