A Washington DC politician has apologised after blaming the city’s weather on “the Rothschilds”.

Trayon White, a member of the city council, posted a video on Friday urging people to “pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation.

“DC keep talking about, ‘we a resilient city’. And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

The Rothschild banking dynasty was started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a Jew from Frankfurt. Due to its great wealth and prominence within the Jewish community, the family has been at the centre of antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control for well over a century.

Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Temple Micah in North West Washington told the Washington Postthat “this kind of antisemitism is unacceptable in any public official.

“This so diminishes what America is about and adds to the oppressive feeling going on in the country right now.

“Public officials have to learn not to say the first ignorant thing that comes into their head.”

The Post reported that originally Mr White responded to questions about the video via text, saying “the video says what it says”.

"However, a few hours after the story was published, Mr White released a statement.

“I work hard every day to combat racism and prejudices of all kinds,” he said.

“I want to apologise to the Jewish community and anyone I have offended.The Jewish community have been allies with me in my journey to help people.

“I did not intend to be antisemitic, and I see I should not have said that after learning from my colleagues.”

He said he had spoken to “friends at Jews United for Justice and they are helping me to understand the comments made against Jews”.

Jews United for Justice, which describes itself as a group “leading Jews in the Greater Washington and Baltimore region to pursue justice and equality”, tweeted: “We spoke with @trayonwhite about how his comments played into the long history of antisemitism.

“We look forward to working with him toward deeper understanding of antisemitism and toward our collective liberation.”