In a recent interview, former President Donald Trump repeated his idea that Jewish Americans who support Democrats in elections are somehow betraying interests critical to them.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel and frankly, should be spoken to,” Trump said on “Real America’s Voice,” which is a far-right news network.
Besides the element of Trump maligning these Jews’ expressions of their religious and cultural backgrounds as supposedly insufficient, some also warn around this line of argument of the false conspiracy theory that American Jews are extensively and as a rule looking towards Israel — to the point, perhaps, of dual loyalties — in the first place. But Trump linking these claims with explicitly suggesting some kind of action against/confrontation of these Jews seems new, though it mirrors some of his rhetoric from other contexts. Though he has excuses for it, he was encouraging urgent action before what became the violent Capitol riot in early 2021.
A rapid response team from the Biden campaign said that in the interview, Trump “appears to threaten Jewish Americans who vote against him.” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer told NBC News that U.S. voters “will reject [Trump’s] chaos, violence, and unhinged threats once again in November.”
Trump has used some version of this rhetoric on Jews and Israel for some time, including on his social media site Truth Social late last year, where he said, according to NBC: “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward!” Trump appears completely unfazed by past criticism, instead barreling ahead with repeating some version of the same claims about Jews.
