Paul Sancia/Associated Press
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Tuesday, April 2, 2024.
CNN
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Former President Donald Trump on Monday once again criticized Jewish Americans who don’t support him, saying Jews who vote for President Joe Biden don’t love Israel and “should be talked to.”
This is the latest example of the presumptive Republican candidate playing up the anti-Semitic trope that Jewish Americans have dual loyalties to the United States and Israel.
“Jews who vote for Biden don’t love Israel, and frankly they should be talked to,” President Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice that aired Monday night.
President Trump claimed that Biden is “fully on the side of the Palestinians” amid the Israeli-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Mr. Biden has largely remained steadfast in his support for Israel’s right to defend itself, but just last week he seriously threatened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with consequences if Israel did not change the way it waged war. And just last week, President Trump said that Israel had “lost the PR war” because of the footage coming out of Gaza, and that Israel needed to “finish what it started” and “finish it fast.” said.
President Trump also claimed on Monday that Jewish and Black Americans vote Democratic “out of habit.”
“A lot of it is habit. Jews habitually vote Democratic, black people habitually vote Democratic,” President Trump said.
His latest comments echo remarks made last month that drew immediate condemnation from the Biden administration and re-election campaign. President Trump said on a podcast hosted by former White House aide Sebastian Gorka that Jews who vote for Democrats hate “their religion” and “everything about Israel.”
President Trump has long used anti-Semitic metaphors to slam Jewish Americans who don’t fully support him. During his first presidential campaign, he addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition, which was rife with anti-Semitic stereotypes, and shortly after leaving office in 2021 he told reporters that Jewish Americans have turned their backs on Israel. He said he is aiming for it.
A year later, he said that American Jews did not fully praise the administration’s policy toward Israel, stating that “evangelicals admire this policy much more highly than Jewish people, especially those living in the United States.” “I’m doing it,” he said. On Jewish New Year, President Trump shared a social media post saying that liberal Jews who do not support him “voted to destroy America and Israel.”
At least 63% of American Jews say their position in American society is less secure than it was a year ago, according to a report released last month by the American Jewish Committee. CNN previously reported that the Anti-Defamation League tracked a total of 3,283 anti-Semitic incidents in the three months after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, an increase of 361% from the same period last year. did.
Jewish Americans have for decades been primarily Democratic, politically liberal voters, supporting Democrats over Republicans by a wide margin, according to a 2020 study by the Pew Research Center. Orthodox Jews lean heavily toward the Republican Party, while American Jews of other denominations, including Reform and Conservative denominations, identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.
