How Anti-Semitic Is Trump?

Trump isn't the most self-aware narcissists on the planet. I don't think he even realizes he's an anti-Semite. He has Jewish friends. He even "let" Ivanka marry a Jew and change her religion. But, given the chance to talk without notes, the anti-semitism has a way of just seeping through anyway. He spoke to several thousand members of Sheldon Adelson's Israeli American Council at the Diplomat in Hollywood, Florida on Saturday night, whining that some American Jews don’t love Israel enough. "You have people-- Jewish people-- and they are great people and they don’t love Israel enough." At least he didn't say that Jews who vote for Democrats-- probably about 75-80% of Jewish voters-- are "disloyal." The Israeli American Council represents almost a quarter million Israelis living in the U.S., many of the extremely-- and ironically-- right wing. These are their national officers:

• Shoham Nicolet, Chief Executive Officer
• Shanee Feig-Kochlani, Chief Creative Officer
• Shely Medved, Chief Financial Officer
• Aya Shechter, Senior National Operations Director
• Orit Mitzner, Senior National Programs Director
• Yael Amit, Senior National Development Director
• Adi Zohar, Senior National Marketing Director

He also asserted that he doesn't have to worry about Jewish votes, because they vote with their own business interests in mind. "You have to vote for me, you have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax. Let’s take 100% of your wealth away. No, no. Even if you don’t like me-- and some of you don’t; some of you, I don’t like at all, actually-- and you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes... A lot of you are in the real estate business. I know you very well, you’re brutal realtors; not nice people at all."

Trump dragged neo-fascist Ohio Rep. Gym Jordan along with him and introduced him to the crowd. You can find the full, discombobulated remarks from the orange orangutan here. The next day The Hill reported that Jewish groups denounced Trump for using anti-Semitic tropes.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America said his remarks were “deeply offensive” in that they repeated “negative stereotypes that have been used historically to target Jews.”

The remarks doubled down on the group's critique that Trump is the “biggest threat to American Jews,” which the group highlighted in an ad released last month (above).

“We strongly denounce these vile and bigoted remarks in which the president-- once again-- used anti-Semitic stereotypes to characterize Jews as driven by money and insufficiently loyal to Israel,” Jewish Democratic Council Executive Director Halie Soifer said in a statement Sunday.

“He even had the audacity to suggest that Jews ‘have no choice’ but to support him, and that we should ‘get people out of [our] country’ in order to increase support of Israel,” she added.

...Left-leaning Jewish advocacy group J Street similarly hit the president over his speech.

“The President of the United States is incapable of addressing Jewish audiences without dipping into the deep well of anti-Semitic tropes that shape his worldview,” the group tweeted Sunday.

“We’re not going to hold our breath waiting for Trump's supporters to speak out. We are going to work tirelessly to defeat this president and those who’ve enabled him 11 months from now,” J Street added.

Soifer pointed out that Trump, in fact, does not have the support of the majority of American Jews.

“American Jews do have a choice, and they’re not choosing President Trump or the Republican Party, which has been complicit in enacting his hateful agenda,” she said.

Soifer said Jewish support for the GOP slashed in half since Trump took office, from 33 percent in 2014 to 17 percent in 2018, and said the decrease was because “Trump’s policies and rhetoric are completely antithetical to Jewish values.”

“An overwhelming majority of Jews are both pro-Israel and anti-Trump because of his incendiary rhetoric targeting our community and others, and because his symbolic gestures on Israel have not made America or Israel more secure,” she said.