Former President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Monday that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and hates “everything about Israel,” again playing into an antisemitic trope that Jewish Americans have dual loyalties to the US and to Israel.
Trump was asked on a podcast hosted by his former White House aide Sebastian Gorka about criticism from the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I actually think they hate Israel,” Trump said. “I don’t think they hate him, I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel.”
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”
Trump directly slammed Schumer, who recently criticized Netanyahu’s government and called for new elections in a speech on the Senate floor about Israel’s war on Hamas and the resulting humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Schumer is the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America.
“Don’t forget, when you see those Palestinian marches, even I, I’m amazed at how many people are in those marches. And guys like Schumer see that, and to him it’s votes, I think it’s votes more than anything else, because he was always pro-Israel. He’s very anti-Israel now,” Trump said.
Schumer, responding to Trump’s comments Monday, said in a post on X, “To make Israel a partisan issue only hurts Israel and the US-Israeli relationship. Trump is making highly partisan and hateful rants.”
“I am working in a bipartisan way to ensure the US-Israeli relationship sustains for generations to come, buoyed by peace in the…
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