Throughout much of his political career, Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed a degree of disdain for Jewish voters in the United States. As the former president sees it, he took steps he considered pro-Israel, with the expectation that he’d receive an electoral reward, and when Jewish voters largely stuck with Democrats anyway, Trump deemed them ungrateful.
This attitude continues to produce ugly results. Last summer, for example, the Republican used his social media platform to share a missive that accused “liberal Jews” of voting to “destroy” America and Israel. This week, as NBC News reported, Trump went further, invoking a dual loyalty trope by claiming that Jewish voters who support Democrats hate Israel.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, on Gorka’s web show. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves, because Israel will be destroyed,” Trump continued, going on to discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The presumptive GOP nominee added that he believes Democrats “hate Israel.” He specifically targeted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — the highest ranking Jewish lawmaker in American history — as being “very anti-Israel,” which is hilarious to anyone who knows anything about Chuck Schumer.
His campaign spokesperson, showing the kind of measured restraint that’s come to define Team Trump, added, “The Democrat [sic] Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal.”
To put it mildly, Jewish Democrats in Congress were not impressed. An Axios report quoted Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, for example, saying, “Trump demonstrates daily his lack of fitness for the presidency by spreading dangerous stereotypes and embracing antisemites.” Rep. Kathy Manning of North Carolina added that the former president’s rhetoric is…
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