Trump has demonized Jewish people for years, despite his alleged support of Israel

Former President Donald Trump gave a campaign speech on Thursday, September 19, purportedly on the topic of antisemitism.

During his speech, Trump lectured Jews that they must vote for him in the upcoming November presidential sweepstakes, and if they do not, that “the Jewish people” would be partially to blame if he is defeated. Trump repeated his perennial warning that the Democrats hold a “curse” over Jewish voters.

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Trump has frequently questioned why Jewish Americans would consider voting for Democrats, especially Kamala Harris.

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“Sadly, and I have to say this, and it hurts me to say it,” Trump continued, “you’re going to still vote for Democrats, and it doesn’t make sense. I say all the time that any Jewish person that votes for her, especially now, her or the Democrat Party, should have their head examined.”

Trump then brought Israel into his diatribe. “You have to defeat Kamala Harris more than any other people on Earth,” Trump said, talking to Jewish voters in the audience. “Israel, I believe, has to defeat her. You know that? And I’ve never said this before: More than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her.”

Antisemitism is a topic that Trump has great familiarity with. Rather than working to eradicate this form of discrimination, often referred to as “the longest hatred,” as a high-visibility politician, Trump seems to promote and advance antisemitism.

Donald Trump is a man with no shame. Posting on Yom Kippur 2023 — the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, our Day of Atonement — this man doesn’t know the meaning of the word “atonement.” Posting on his so-called Truth Social media platform, he wrote, “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

He then commanded liberal Jews to “Wake Up Sheep,” claiming that his policies on Israel do not make him a Nazi or antisemitic. He then promoted several antisemitic tropes by criticizing supposed liberal Jews for not supporting his policies on Israel and bashing Jewish people for not voting the “right way.”

During his occupancy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and since reluctantly leaving the residence, Donald Trump has consistently used Jewish bodies as stepping stones to promote his far-right conspiracies.

His previous diatribe chastising Jews on Truth Social included comments in October 2022 in which he wrote that “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — before it is too late!”

Trump is still smarting from having to exit the Oval Office after an estimated 75% of Jews voted for his opponent, Joe Biden, while a mere 22% gave their vote to the twice impeached disgraced former president.

During his second presidential campaign, Trump has tried appealing to Jews by touting his supposed accomplishments for Jews and the state of Israel: He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and by declaring the Golan Heights area, taken from Syria in 1967, as the sovereign territory of Israel.

On his social media site, however, Trump has rebuked Jews, who comprise a mere 2.4% of the U.S. adult population, for not fully appreciating his support of Israel.

“No President has done more for Israel than I have,” he asserted. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

Trump has continually fallen into the longstanding antisemitic trope of Jews allegedly having multiple loyalties: First with their faith, then with worldwide Jewry, followed by their allegiance to the state of Israel, and lastly, with their own resident country.

This is a repetition of what he argued in 2019 while still President when, at the White House, he said of Jews, “If you want to vote Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel.”

Trump’s antisemitism and attempts to silence dissent

Trump must confront his own antisemitic words and actions before he’ll have any credibility in allegedly protecting the civil and human rights of Jews (or anyone else) in his own country.

Only a few days prior to the release of his executive order to combat antisemitism in the U.S., Trump told an audience at a meeting of the American Israeli Council, “A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me – you have no choice. You’re not gonna vote for Pocahontas [a reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren], I can tell you that. You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away!”

Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office earlier that year that “any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat – I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

He didn’t say originally to whom this would be “disloyal,” though later, in front of a gaggle of reporters on the White House lawn, he clarified, “In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you’re being very disloyal to Israel, and only weak people would say anything other than that.”

In a 2019 speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump said that the recently reelected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “your prime minister.” This implied that Jews are not or cannot be U.S. citizens, but we are actually citizens only of Israel.

So, any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat is both ignorant and disloyal to Israel, possibly to the United States as an ally of Israel, and by extension, to himself as an alleged defender of Israel.

The context of Trump’s charge developed as controversy swirled around first-term Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). In 2012 she tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”

A few weeks later, she told an audience in D.C., “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Confronted about this latter remark by her Democratic colleague, Nita Lowey, Omar replied, “I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committees.”

Trump seemed not to understand the irony in his attacks on Omar, since we must chastise both Omar and Trump for invoking the centuries-old antisemitic trope of Jews allegedly having dual or multiple loyalties.

The trope goes back to Europe in the Middle Ages when the nobility and the larger citizenry accused Jews of isolating themselves and having no desire to integrate and hold allegiance to the state. Jews were blamed as national churches conducted massive campaigns, often brutally, to convert Jews to Christianity, as monarchs forced Jews onto the poorest lands and out of their countries entirely.  

Trump, though, would not settle by invoking the antisemitic trope of disloyalty or dual loyalties. He went so much further into the domain of Jews as cheap money-grubbers and as controllers of financial systems and of governments. This long-established libel has given populations throughout Europe justification for wide-scale attacks and government-sponsored pogroms against the Jewish people.

John O’Donnell, in a 1991 book about the former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, said Trump had told him, “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

Before the Republican Jewish Coalition in December 2015, Trump gloated, “I’m a negotiator, like you folks. We are negotiators … Is there anybody that doesn’t renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them — perhaps more than any other room I’ve ever spoken in.”

Trump also argued that the assembled Jews would not support him because he couldn’t be bought, “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money. Isn’t it crazy?”

The Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville, Virginia, August 11 – 12, 2017 brought together white supremacists, members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and far-right militias chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us.” They killed a counter-protester by plowing a car into the crowd.

“I think there is blame on both sides,” said Trump about the rally “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.”

He criticized “alt-left” groups that he claimed were “very, very violent.” He later stated that “There were very fine people on both sides.”  

Trump focused his venom on Jewish billionaire George Soros. He erroneously accused him of funding protesters against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and also  suggested that Soros might have funded the refugee caravan of immigrants from Central America approaching the U.S. southern border.

This added to the conspiracy theory that Jews are bringing immigrants into the United States to replace white people (and thus, the “Jews will not replace us” chant of the neo-Nazi white nationalists at the Charlottesville rally).

The shooter of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 — who killed 11 parishioners and wounded six others, including four brave police officers — blamed Jews for bringing in an invasion of nonwhite immigrants to the United States who will diminish and slaughter the white race.

“The Washington establishment and the financial and media corporations that fund it exist for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself,” stated Donald Trump in his rally speech in West Palm Beach, Florida on October 14, 2016.

He continued, “For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests…[i]t’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities…This is a conspiracy against you, the American people, and we cannot let this happen or continue. This is our moment of reckoning as a society and as a civilization itself.”

Trump certainly has no general grasp of history, but he definitely understood how to use the propaganda of fascism to sway public opinion.

While his wife, Melania, finally admitted to plagiarizing the words of Michelle Obama in her speech before the delegates at the Republican National Convention in the summer of 2016, Donald will never admit to lifting sentiments and words verbatim from the notorious Protocols (Minutes) of a Meeting of the Learned Elders of Zion.

The Protocols was a fabricated antisemitic text dating from 1903 that was widely distributed by Russian Czarist forces to turn public opinion against a so-called “Jewish Revolution” for the purpose of convincing the populace that Jews were plotting to impose a conspiratorial international Jewish government.

It is the alleged minutes of a late 19^th-century meeting where Jewish leaders planned to subvert the minds, morals, and cultures of non-Jews by controlling politicians, the press, and world economies for world domination. The Protocols were translated into many languages and circulated throughout the world.

During his Florida speech, Donald Trump succeeded in having his antisemitic leitmotiv dog whistle heard, since, among many of his ardent supporters, the racist Christian white supremacist so-called “alt-right” received it loud and clear.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader and current racist radio host, David Duke, added his praise of Trump’s “incredible speech” on his radio show October 14, 2016, saying, “Donald Trump had an incredible speech last night in West Palm Beach, maybe the strongest, most all out speech concerning the war that is being waged against us and the war that is being waged by the oligarchs who control the international banks and the globalists.”

“These Jewish supremacists and these Jewish radicals who have been dominating international banking, the financing of politics and leaders, bribing them in effect, the people who have controlled the media, the people who have controlled the political apparatus in so many countries, who have controlled much of the academia, much of the discourse, they’re crazy….They’re willing to risk World War III for their political objectives in the Middle East, in Israel, and elsewhere,” Duke said.

The Christian white nationalist website, The Right Stuff, celebrated Trump’s Florida speech. Lawrence Murray wrote an article affirming that “somehow Trump manages to channel Goebbels and ‘Detroit Republicanism’ all at the same time.”

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister for Propaganda and Public Education, wrote and spoke continually of an alleged “Jewish conspiracy” to undermine German culture and civilization itself. Speaking at the September 1935 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, for example, Goebbels connected Bolshevism with international Jewry. He warned Nazi party members of a supposed international Jewish conspiracy to snuff out western civilization.

Toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump ran an ad portraying three rich Jews—- then-Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and financier George Soros — with the narration denouncing “those who control the levers of power in Washington,” and the “global special interests” who “partner with these people who don’t have your good in mind.”

Donald Trump, during his presidential campaign, tweeted a picture of Hillary Clinton with $100 bills and a six-pointed Star of David (Mogen David), evoking the age-old stereotype of Jews as money-grubbing cheats. The meme was also on a neo-Nazi website. Trump did not apologize, but he ultimately took the tweet down from his site.

Wayne Allyn Root, a far-right conspiracy theorist, asserted that Jews in Israel regard Trump as something akin to “the King of Israel” or “the second coming of God.” Does Root not realize that Jews do not believe in Jesus as the son of God or of a “second coming”?

Of course, Trump delighted in Root’s words, and only half-jokingly announced to a group of reporters that “I am the Chosen One.”

Though he talks about Jews, Trump rarely talks to us. He directs his comments to conservative Christian Evangelicals.

He stirred up what Christians call “The Rapture,” in which Armageddon will come in the area of Israel. Jews will be sacrificed so that “good Christians” will go forth to meet Jesus on the final judgment day. It is a cynical use of the Jewish people to conform to prophecy in the Christian testaments. Many of these people are known as “Christian Zionists.” They use Jews for their own supposed “purposes.”

It does not matter that Trump’s son-in-law is an orthodox Jew, that his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism, and that he has Jewish grandchildren. It does not matter that Trump has employed Jewish people and counts Jews among his friends.

What is clear, though, is that when anyone “uses” an already marginalized group to advance their own agendas or careers by tokenizing or feigning support, that itself is an act of oppression, in this case, antisemitism.

Donald Trump uses Jews, and by so doing, he demonstrated his antisemitic bigotry by attempting to weaponize Jewish bodies!    

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