Frantic Trump Hopes Attacks On Harrises As Anti-Semitic Will Stick
Trump has attacked Vice President Kamala Harris for not really being Black and being anti-Semitic, he has tried to smear Harris’s Jewish husband for not being a good Jew and he has bloviated that a real man wouldn’t vote for a woman for president.
Trump also labeled Harris as anti-Catholic even though she was the vice president under President Joe Biden, only the second Catholic president in American history. Trump has never been actively religious, but he has been supportive of Christian nationalists and his running mate, JD Vance, R-Ohio, converted to Catholicism in 2019.
Trump’s remarks about Harris and her husband come after his recent speech at an event hosted by the far right, trump-backing conservative organization “Turning Point Action.” Trump told the group that if he were to be elected, Christians would never need to vote again.
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” trump said. “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
In his latest flurry of criticism against Harris, trump is fanning the flames of anti-Semitism to steal votes and also to use as ammunition so that he can blame the Jews if he is defeated in this year’s presidential election. One common line of attack being used by trump is the anti-Semitic trope that Jews have allegiance to Israel and not to the U.S.
Trump said in an interview last week with radio host, Sid Rosenberg, that Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people” and agreed with Rosenberg who called Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, “a crappy Jew” and “a horrible Jew.”
“A Jewish person that voted for her or him or whoever it’s going to be, I assume it’s going to be her. Anybody that did that should have their head examined,” trump said.
In the radio interview, trump claimed that Harris’s body language in a recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed her “disdain.”
“№1, she doesn’t like Israel. №2, she doesn’t like Jewish people. You know it, I know it and everybody knows it and nobody wants to say it,” trump said.
Trump said that Jewish voters who backed Democrats “should have their head examined” and called Jewish people who vote Democratic “absolute [fools].”
Rosenberg interviewed trump on his show, “Sid and Friends in the Morning.” He has long been a controversial voice, particularly on the Imus show where he said on-air that Venus Williams was an “animal,” and that she and Serena Williams would be better suited for National Geographic magazine than for Playboy, that “faggots play tennis” and that the United States women’s national soccer team were “a bunch of juiced up dykes.” Rosenberg was fired from the Imus show after making crude remarks about Australian singer Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer diagnosis. His cousin is former U.S. Sen. Norman Coleman Jr., R-Minn., a strong supporter of Israel who is a lobbyist on behalf of the government of Saudi Arabia.
Emhoff is the first Jewish member of the White House’s “Big 4,” which refers to the president, vice president and their spouses. He has celebrated Passover and Hanukkah at the White House, and he hung a Jewish mezuzah, a sign of reverence, on the doorpost of the vice president’s official residence. His family were congregants of Temple Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Aberdeen Township, N.J., where Emhoff had his bar mitzvah in 1977.
Emhoff, 60, is a lawyer, the first second gentleman in American federal history and the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president. He is the third man to be a spouse of the vice presidential candidate of a major party, after John Zaccaro (husband of Geraldine Ferraro) and Todd Palin (then-husband of Sarah Palin).
Emhoff was divorced and married Kamala Harris in 2014. They have raised Emhoff’s two children.
Emhoff has been one of the Biden administration’s most prominent voices against anti-Semitism. After a November 2022 meeting between trump, Kanye West, a self-professed anti-Semite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, the White House announced that Emhoff would lead a round table on anti-Semitism.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2023, Emhoff visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland alongside Holocaust survivors. He was part of the White House team that launched the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, the country’s first combatting anti-Semitism strategy.
In the context of reactions to the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Emhoff spoke about anti-Semitism in schools and on college campuses. He said that conflating Jewish identity with the actions of the Israeli government had led to increased hostility and threats against Jewish people. That conflation is a key component of trump’s strategy.
Trump said on a podcast by former White House aide Sebastian Gorka that “I actually think they [Democrat-voting Jews] hate Israel. I don’t think they hate him [Chuck Schumer]. I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel.”
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”
Gorka is a far right, British-Hungarian-American media host and commentator. He also served in the trump administration as a Deputy Assistant to the President from January until August 2017. Gorka also is a spokesman for Relief Factor, a fish oil supplement.
In April 2021, Gorka was permanently banned from YouTube for repeatedly violating the company’s policy on spreading misinformation related to the 2020 presidential election. Gorka supports gun rights and capital punishment while he opposes illegal immigration and same sex marriage.
Gorka was criticized soon after he was hired by the trump administration in early 2017. His foreign policy credentials and professional behavior were questioned. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, the National Jewish Democratic Council, and the Interfaith Alliance had called for Gorka’s resignation over his ties to Hungarian far-right groups.
Gorka was detained January 31, 2016, at the Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington D.C. for attempting to board a plane with a 9 mm handgun in his luggage.
In recent days, trump and supporters have flailed in panic mode, trying desperately to find a bludgeon against Democrats after their one big issue, an aging forgetful President, is no longer relevant. Republicans, led by trump, and his ever-thinning skin, are nothing less than hysterical as Harris brings in millions in campaign donations while her popularity meets or matches trump.
Promoting anti-Semitic and chauvinist tropes have always been part of trump’s DNA. It is anybody’s guess how much ketchup has hit the walls in recent days as a Black woman with a Jewish husband is running neck and neck with trump, the proud and acknowledged white supremacist, Christian nationalist, chauvinist and xenophobe.
And no crueler cut could be made than a new group that has coalesced, aiming at the very heart of trump’s white male superiority persona. It calls itself, sarcastically, “White Dudes for Harris” and has raised more than $4 million in just a few days.
The latest appalling outbursts are typical of trump who throughout his political career has played on stereotypes about Jews and politics.
In 2015, trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition that “you want to control your politicians” and suggested the audience used money to exert control. In the White House, he said Jews who vote for Democrats are “very disloyal to Israel.”
During his 2016 presidential campaign, he used a common anti-Semitic trope when he falsely claimed that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, met “in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.”
There was his bigoted claims that there were “good people on both sides” after white supremacists marched in in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” One person died after a white supremacist drove his car into a group of protesters.
After his defeat in 2020, Trump whined that Jewish voters “don’t love Israel enough,” dining with prominent antisemites at Mar-a-Lago, and arguing that Jews need to “get their act together” and “appreciate” Israel “before it is too late.” In late 2022, trump declared that Jewish leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” over their “lack of loyalty” to trump.
Two years ago, trump invited Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist and Kanye West, who expressed anti-Semitic views, to a dinner at his Florida residence.
Trump’s surrogate, FOX News, has quickly risen in support of trump’s latest missives against women. In a recent episode of “The Five,” host Jesse Watters said, “I don’t see why any man would vote Democrat. It’s not the party of virtue, security; it’s not the party of strength; it’s definitely not the party of family.”
“To be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish, that person has mommy issues, or they’re just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said, in jaw-dropping fashion, “And I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.”
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew and strong trump ally, said that trump’s point is that “Jews who are voting Democrat do not understand the Democratic Party.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition defended trump against anti-Semitism charges, pointing to his presidential record that included moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Jewish settlements in occupied territories. Both actions have been criticized for having fueled Palestinian anger over occupation of their lands.
Trump is capitalizing on the opinions of Jewish Democrats, and especially Jewish lawmakers, who have not supported Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in which more than 31,800 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and took hostages. Much of northern Gaza has been leveled, and officials warned famine is imminent.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the government’s highest-ranking Jewish official, last week sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s handling of the war in Gaza. Schumer called for new elections in Israel and warned the civilian toll was damaging Israel’s global standing.
Trump responded by charging that Jewish Democrats, like Schumer, were being disloyal to their faith and to Israel.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel,” trump said.
In a post on his social network site, Truth Social, trump said Harris is “the most Anti-Catholic person ever to run for high office in the U.S.”
“Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Wack Job, just ask the Knights of Columbus. P.S. Jewish people are treated even worse, if that’s possible. They are dropping Kamala and the Democrats like flies — And it’s about time!” trump posted.
CatholicVote.org, a conservative, non-profit political advocacy group, which is independent of the Catholic Church, calls itself a “lay movement of committed Catholics.”
“Kamala Harris represents the most vile anti-Catholic threat of any leading candidate for president in American history. She is a candidate of the hard left. And her record and her words demonstrate a gross anti-Catholic bias and bigotry,” CatholicVote president Brian Burch said. He was referring to Harris’s support of a woman’s right to choose abortion and her past criticism of the Catholic Knights of Columbus, a strong anti-abortion voice.
Burch is a staunch trump supporter as reflected in an interview in 2016, shortly after trump was indicted over hush payments made to an adult film star. Trump was later convicted.
Burch said the indictment was “very clear that this is essentially what I call a political joyride. There is very little chance that they are successful with this. The clear purpose of this effort is to tarnish the former president for political reasons.”
CatholicVote.org has been strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and in June 2022, urged parents to review any LGBT-themed books at their local libraries so that no children will be able to see them.
Furthering his chauvinist reputation, Trump said in an interview on Fox News that Harris would be “like a play toy” to world leaders if elected president.
“They (world leaders) look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her,” said trump. “I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.”
Trump apparently was not aware of the many, strong women who have led nations around the world, from Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain, Golda Meier of Israel, Isabel Peron of Argentina, Indira Ghandi of India, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and many others.
The former president has routinely attacked women who have criticized him. During the 2016 Republican presidential campaign, he labeled Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary.” He mocked his Republican primary rival Carly Fiorina’s face on television and shared an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz, the wife of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
He has referred to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as “crazy,” adult film actress Stormy Daniels as “horse face,” and his 2024 primary rival Nikki Haley as “birdbrain.”