Donald Trump calls Joe Biden weak on antisemitism, ignoring his own rhetoric
NEW YORK — Donald Trump accuses Joe Biden of offering a weak response to anti-Semitism, using the clashes on college campuses over the war in Gaza as a campaign issue. But Trump’s attacks ignore his own long history of rhetoric that invokes the language of Nazi Germany and plays on stereotypes about Jews and politics.
The latest example came last weekend, when Trump — who has accused the White House of playing a role in his multiple state and federal criminal charges — told Republican donors gathered for a private retreat at his Florida resort that Biden had a ‘Gestapo administration’ leads. referring to the secret police of Nazi Germany.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, called it a “deliberate tactic” to attack Biden and distract from his own record.
“It is fully consistent with his long history of offensive and irresponsible comments when it comes to the Jewish community, including the normalization of anti-Semitism,” Spitalnick said.
Biden’s campaign called it “despicable” and an attack on law enforcement.
Trump’s efforts to take a moral stand against anti-Semitism come as the Democratic president navigates the intense divisions in the war between Israel and Hamas and the resulting unrest due to demonstrations. Trump and other Republicans have seized on the disruptions on college campuses, which have sometimes been violent, as a sign of weakness by Biden and the Democrats. It’s also the latest example of Trump’s threadbare tactic of repackaging a censure he has received and pinning it on his opponents.
As pro-Palestinian demonstrations have erupted on college campuses, some people have reported anti-Semitic chants and messages in and around the protests and some Jewish students have said they felt unsafe on campus. Trump’s campaign on Monday released a video on Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, that aimed to contrast the 2024 presidential candidates’ responses to anti-Semitism.
The video shows footage of Trump visiting Israel and speeches he has given in which he pledged to support the Jewish people and fight anti-Semitism, while showing footage of the protests on campuses and clips of Biden responding to protesters angry about his government’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas. .
One of the clips shows Biden saying, “They have a point,” but the next sentence in which Biden said, “We need to get a lot more care in Gaza” is missing.
Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, criticized Biden for taking “weeks to even talk about the Biden Campus protests” and not condemning what she described as “pro-Hamas, pro-genocide mobs,” and said: ‘The sad truth is he needs their votes.”
“Jewish Americans and Jewish leaders around the world recognize that President Trump has done more for them and the State of Israel than any president in history,” Leavitt also said Monday.
Trump also spoke about the protests as he arrived in court Monday for his trial in a hush money case. Noting that Columbia University has canceled its main commencement ceremony after weeks of pro-Palestinian protests, Trump said, “That shouldn’t happen.” He also claimed that many protesters were supported by Biden donors.
“Okay, are you listening Israel? I hope you’re listening, Israel. I hope you get smart,” Trump said.
Biden has said he condemns “the anti-Semitic protests” and last week he broke days of silence and called for “order” after some schools forcibly cleared protesters, leading to clashes.
James Singer, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign, said Biden opposes anti-Semitism, but Trump does not.
“Trump has praised neo-Nazis, dined with neo-Nazis, echoed the rhetoric of neo-Nazis and reportedly praised the achievements of Adolf Hitler,” Singer said in a statement. “He cannot lead us, so he tries to divide us with the oldest ideas: hatred, anger, revenge and retaliation.”
After white nationalists chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and clashed with anti-racism protesters, Trump received some of his fiercest reactions as president when he said there were “very fine people on both sides. ”
Trump downplayed Charlottesville last week, saying the deadly rally was “nothing” compared to the ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Not long after launching his third White House campaign in 2022, Trump received widespread condemnation for dining at his Mar-a-Lago club with a white nationalist who denied the Holocaust and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, shortly after he had been dining for weeks. of anti-Semitic comments.
He has criticized his third campaign in the White House for using language similar to Adolf Hitler to argue that immigrants entering the US illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and labeling his opponents as “vermin ‘.
Trump has also been accused of promoting anti-Semitic tropes for suggesting that Jewish people who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and hate “their religion” are “deeply disloyal to Israel.” Critics have said the comments evoke the decline of dual loyalty, with Jews accused of being more loyal to their religion than to their country.
Following Trump’s reference to the “Gestapo” this weekend, Jonathan Sarna, an American Jewish history professor at Brandeis University, said there are “great dangers” in Nazi comparisons.
“Not only is it historically incorrect, it is also morally offensive,” Sarna said. “The problem is that you want to associate everything you don’t like with the most evil forces, ignoring all the crucial differences. At that moment we forget what the Holocaust really was.”
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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.