CONTENT NOTE: If you came here to fight about Israel and Gaza, GTFO. Wait, is that how “content notes” work?
In 2022, Donald Trump Truth-Social-tweeted that “Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late!” This, just after saying that “our wonderful Evangelicals” are far more appreciative of what he’s done for Israel than those ungrateful Jews.
In 2023, Trump rang in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, by posting a meme calling American Jews “sheep” and encouraging them to “make better choices going forward.” The meme asked what kind of “Natzi” had done all the things for Israel that Trump had, demonstrating yet again Team Trump’s spelling skills. Of course, Trump’s “accomplishments” that were supposed to impress American Jews were largely a laundry list of things he did in Israel for both Jewish and Christian extremists. (Moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, support for illegal settlements, etc.)
He has referred to Israel as “your country” when referring to American Jews, invoking that age-old antisemitic dual loyalty canard.
In 2019, he said in the Oval Office that “any Jewish people who would vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
Which sounds a lot like the wildly antisemitic thing Trump said yesterday on his pet Sebastian Gorka’s radio show. (You know, the guy with all the Hungarian Nazi friends.)
Gorka fake-innocently asked Trump why Democrats hate Benjamin Netanyahu. (Much like most Israelis hate Netanyahu, even more so after October 7.) He was talking about how a number of prominent Democrats in the US — like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who last week called for new elections in Israel once the war starts winding down, and President Joe Biden, who has signaled support for Schumer since he made those comments — seem to be publicly reaching the end of their ropes with Bibi, who most people agree is authoritarian garbage.
In response, Trump went on one of his verbal benders, which he began by declaring that “I actually think they hate Israel.” After many long babblings, Trump reached his climax: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves!”
Oh, how Trump seethes at American Jews.
Trump further declared that Schumer, the top-ranking Jewish person in all of American government, is “very anti-Israel now,” and that he’s only saying these things because of the people in “those Palestinian marches.”
Trump says and does wildly antisemitic things a lot. This is after all the man who looked America in the face in 2017 and said there were good people “on both sides” of the Charlottesville Nazi march where his supporters screamed, “Jews will not replace us!”
But Trump and his Republican allies largely traffic in a certain kind of antisemitism, the kind reflected in the Trump quotes at the top of this post, the casual kind that’s most popular with white conservative evangelicals, who love Israel much the way Jeffrey Epstein loved America’s youth. Trump and Republican evangelicals, plus ultra-conservative Jewish people like Ben Shapiro who give them cover, love the trope that if you don’t support their extremist counterparts in Israel — AKA Netanyahu, the far-right extremists that have hijacked the Israeli government, extremist settlers — then you are either a Bad Jew, an Ungrateful Jew, or not any kind of real Jew at all.
To be extremely clear, they’re talking about most Jewish Americans, who vote Democratic by super-majorities, 70 percent for Joe Biden in 2020.
They think they get to tell most Jewish Americans that they “hate their religion,” due to their ungrateful lack of support for Trump and Republicans.
So, like clockwork, now that we’ve gotten to the point that Biden and Schumer and other similarly ideologically positioned Democrats are saying out loud that Bibi is a motherfucker, here come the Republicans, picking up with their antisemitism against most American Jews, for not Jewish-ing correctly. Mitch McConnell reared back on his decaying turtle shell to call Schumer’s comments “grotesque.”
Their leader, after all, is this vile bigot who eats dinner with Nazis, who talks like a Nazi, and who keeps talking like a Nazi even when you directly show him that he sounds like Hitler.
Trump’s campaign responded to the latest controversy with a statement from press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said, “President Trump is right — the Democrat Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal.” You know, in case any fence-sitters need a reminder how Trump really feels about things.
Schumer responded to all of this like an adult, obviously. White House spox Andrew Bates told the Washington Post that there’s “no justification for spreading toxic, false stereotypes that threaten fellow citizens. None.” Furthermore:
“Like President Biden said, he was moved to run for President when he saw Neo Nazis chanting ‘the same Antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany in the 1930s’ in Charlottesville,” Bates added. “Leaders have an obligation to call hate what it is and bring Americans together against it.”
We’ll let Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin have the last word: "Luckily I don't know any Jews who look to Donald Trump for advice on how to be Jewish.”
The end.
[Washington Post / Axios / video via Jacob Kornbluh]
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We’ll let Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin have the last word: "Luckily I don't know any Jews who look to Donald Trump for advice on how to be Jewish.”
Mic drop
Jesus Christ....
Jared Kushner was blasted Tuesday for saying that Gaza's "waterfront property could be very valuable," while suggesting Israel transport Palestinian civilians out of the Gaza Strip and move them into the Negev desert while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) "cleans up" the Hamas-controlled region.