Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Washington: Former President Donald Trump, speaking Thursday at a campaign event in Washington centered on denouncing antisemitism in America, said “if I don’t win this election,” that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”
Trump repeated that assertion at a second event, this one focused on Israeli Americans, where he blamed Jews whom he described as “voting for the enemy” for the hypothetical destruction of Israel that he insisted would happen if he lost in November.
Trump on Thursday offered an extended airing of grievances against Jewish Americans who have not voted for him. He repeated his denunciation of Jews who vote for Democrats before suggesting that the Democratic Party had a “hold, or curse,” on Jewish Americans and that he should be getting “100 per cent” of Jewish votes because of his policies on Israel.
Jews, who make up just over 2 per cent of America’s population, are considered to be one of the most consistently liberal demographics in the country, a trend Trump has lamented repeatedly this year as he tries to chip away at their long-standing affiliation with Democrats.
Much as he repeatedly spins a doomsday vision of America as he campaigns this year, Trump has pointed to Hamas’ deadly Oct 7 massacre and to the war in the Gaza Strip as he has insisted that Israel will “cease to exist” within a few years if he does not win in November.
“With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 per cent of the Jewish vote,” he said during his earlier speech Thursday, at a campaign event where he spoke to an audience of prominent Republican Jews — including Miriam Adelson, the megadonor who is a major Trump benefactor — and lawmakers. Trump added, “I really haven’t been treated very well, but it’s the story of my life.”
During his speeches, Trump made no mention of Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina. Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, came under fire as CNN reported that on a pornographic forum, he had once called himself a “black NAZI” and defended slavery. Trump once endorsed him and called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
But during his speech, while lamenting the decline of the pro-Israel lobby over the last 15 years, Trump noted that in the past, “if you said something about a Jewish person or something about Israel that was bad, you were out of politics.”
Trump has been repeatedly criticised for remarks that have either attacked Jewish Democrats or drawn on antisemitic tropes. During his presidency, he accused American Jews who did not back him of being disloyal, a remark criticised for evoking a long-standing trope suggesting that Jews have a “dual loyalty” and are often more loyal to Israel than to their own nations. Trump returned to that Thursday as he wondered aloud why he was not getting more support from American Jews for his foreign policy involving Israel.
Trump also drew withering criticism in 2022 for dining with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and influential white supremacist, shortly after starting his 2024 campaign. Earlier this month, Trump traveled with Laura Loomer, a far-right activist known for sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally antisemitic remarks.
Earlier this year, the former president also repeatedly played down the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that occurred during his term as president in 2017. In Charlottesville’s aftermath, Trump drew a moral equivalency between the white supremacists — who brandished swastikas, Confederate flags and “Trump-Pence” signs — and peaceful counterprotesters, asserting that there were “very fine people on both sides.”
In his earlier speech Thursday, Trump also rattled off a list of antisemitic incidents and hate crimes against Jews — particularly on college campuses — that he sought to tie to Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival, asserting that Harris “hates Israel.” In contrast, Trump portrayed himself to Jews as “your defender, your protector,” and “the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.”
“I’m the one that’s protecting you,” Trump said near the end of his speech, adding, in a reference to Democrats, that “these are the people that are going to destroy you.”
Later, speaking at the Israeli American Council’s summit, Trump invoked the Holocaust, comparing the current geopolitical moment to the period that preceded the systematic murder of 6 million Jews. Then, he continued by saying that if Harris won in November, “you will have the most anti-Israel president by far.”
Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, rejected Trump’s accusations, saying that Harris “stands steadfastly against antisemitism both at home and abroad and will do the same as president.”