Former President Donald Trump said that any Jew who votes for Democrats “hates their religion,” an escalation of his anger at a community that continues to vote overwhelmingly for his opponents and shows little sign of changing course this November.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed,” Trump said on Monday, Mar. 18, in an interview with Sebastian Gorka, a far-right commentator who once worked as a Trump White House advisor.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who again is facing off against President Joe Biden in this year’s election, has long been baffled by how American Jewish voters continue to favor Democrats in overwhelming numbers, despite the series of pro-Israel policies he advanced as president, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and pulling out of the Iran deal.
In a column for MSNBC, author and political contributor Steve Benen, producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” said the ex-president’s remarks were “Trump’s latest example of antisemitism.”
Gorka asked Trump about growing differences between the Biden administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over Israel’s prosecution of its war against Hamas, which Biden has largely backed. Trump alluded to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Democrat and majority leader who last week called for early elections in Israel.
“I really believe [Democrats] hate Israel, and they also see a lot of votes,” Trump said. “Don’t forget, when you see those Palestinian marches, even I am amazed at how many people are in those marches. And guys like Schumer see that. I think it’s votes more than anything else, because he was always pro-Israel. He’s very anti-Israel now.”
The Biden campaign immediately seized on the Gorka interview and posted it on social media, noting a recent report that Trump has praised Adolf Hitler. (Trump has denied the claim.)
“Trump, who reportedly said Hitler ‘did some good things’: Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They should be ashamed of themselves,” the Biden campaign said in its post on X, formerly Twitter.
In an interview with Axios, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) called Trump’s remarks an “outrageous slander against the vast majority of American Jews. … How dare Donald Trump lecture Chuck Schumer about being Jewish.
“Luckily, I don’t know any Jews who look to Donald Trump for advice on how to be Jewish,” he said. “After all, this is the guy who saw ‘very fine people on both sides’ of an antisemitic riot and entertained the neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes over at his house at Mar-a-Lago for dinner.”
Ron Kampeas writes for the JTA global Jewish news source. Jmore staff contributed to this report.
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