Leticia Remauro — a Staten Island candidate for borough president who served as a campaign aide to Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis — shouted “Heil Hitler” during a Facebook live video she took at a protest against coronavirus safety protocols.
“We’re with the small business community, with Staten Island to stand up for our right — the right to pay taxes so that we can pay the salaries of these good men and women,” Remauro said of police officers seen in the background outside Mac’s Public House last month. “They are just doing their job.”
“But, not for nothing. Sometimes you got to say, `Heil Hitler!’ Not a good idea to send me here,” Remauro said in the video.
Remauro, a former SI Republican Party chairwoman, was among the protesters defending the owner of Mac’s Public House for defying Cuomo’s COVID-19 safety rules barring indoor dining in bars and eateries. The owners declared the pub an “autonomous zone.”
“Just like those sheriffs said to Cuomo. They weren’t going to bust down doors and get people out of their houses,” she said, referencing another rule to restrict home gatherings.
Remauro, whose PR firm handled social media for Malliotakis’ successful congressional campaign and served as campaign manager for her 2017 mayoral campaign, issued an apology as her videotape invoking Hitler and the Nazis spread on social media.
“This is a VERY BAD ANALOGY and I am apologizing heartily for my choice of words in this video,” Remauro said in a FB post.
“I take full ownership of it. I won’t try to make any excuses. PERIOD.”
Remauro, during an interview Monday night, said she intended to convey that Cuomo and de Blasio were acting in a dictatorial manner. She also said she’s sensitive to Hitler and Nazi Germany because her son-in-law has family members who are Holocaust survivors.
“We spent a lot of time understanding what happened in Nazi Germany,” she said.
Remauro was also in D.C. last week when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol Building.
She said she unveiled artist Scott Lobaido’s unflattering portrait of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and walked with it from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.
Remauro also said she was briefly outside the Capitol but left before protesters invaded the building. “We got out as protesters were coming in,” she said.
She said she was in her hotel when the siege took place and had nothing to do with it.
Remauro has participated in other protests against Cuomo’s restriction on businesses during the pandemic.