Donald Trump has been spouting verbal diarrhea of late.
Speaking at two Jewish campaign events in the last few days, the former U.S. president and Republican Party presidential nominee claimed that American Jews would be mostly to blame if he lost November’s election to his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“If I don’t win this election, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” he said, raising eyebrows.
Then, in shrill partisan fashion, he likened Jewish electoral support for the Democrats to “voting for the enemy” and asserted he should be receiving “100 percent” of Jewish votes due to his pro-Israel policies during his four-year presidency.
Trump was indeed pro-Israel, but his most recent comments are thoughtless, inherently dangerous, and have set off alarm bells.
Trump, in essence, is suggesting that Jewish Americans are the key to his victory and hinting that they will be scapegoated if he loses the forthcoming election.
The question that should be asked is why he has such unrealistic expectations of Jews. After all, they represent only 2 percent of the population of the United States. And as he himself has acknowledged, he managed to win only 24 percent of the Jewish vote in the last election, which Joe Biden won by a comfortable margin despite Trump’s groundless allegation that it was rigged.
By singling out Jews in this manner, Trump exposes them to weird and vicious conspiracy theories that could lead to verbal and perhaps physical intimidation and violence from his most ardent supporters and the antisemitic lunatic fringe.
Clearly, Trump is playing with fire.
If he had adopted a balanced and reasonable approach, Trump would have also saddled Hispanics, African Americans or white evangelical Christians with this onerous responsibility. But instead, he deliberately chose Jews, a historically vulnerable minority.
As Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in a statement posted on X, “preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews. It increases their sense of alienation in a moment of vulnerability when right-wing extremists and left-wing anti-Zionists continually demonize and slander Jews. This is happening on college campuses, in public places, everywhere. There are threats on all sides.”
Greenblatt’s predecessor, Abraham Foxman, accused Trump of “reinforcing all the canards about Jewish disloyalty, Jewish power, Jewish influence. And he’s saying, basically, if he loses it’s our fault. He’s setting us up.”
Although he is probably not an antisemite himself, Trump is indeed stoking the embers of antisemitic animus, which has spiked tremendously in the United States and elsewhere since Hamas’ murderous invasion of Israel last October 7.
Trump, in his most recent speeches to Jewish organizations, has portrayed himself as the “defender” and “protector” of Jewish Americans and the “best friend” they have “ever had in the White House.
In casting himself as a loyal friend and ally, Trump went one step too far by characterizing the Democrats as “the people that are going to destroy you.” By way of elaboration, Trump claimed that Harris “hates” Israel and that, if elected, she would be “the most anti-Israel president by far.”
Like Biden, Harris has been critical of Israel’s military methods during its offensive in the Gaza Strip and has expressed sympathy for the plight of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. These are legitimate critiques, though they do not invalidate Israel’s need to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities so that it can never rule Gaza again. But to suggest that she hates Israel per se is sheer nonsense and nothing more than a cheap and desperate ploy to gain the trust and support of Jewish voters.
It would appear that Trump has no moral or factual compunctions about mouthing inflammatory rhetoric to bolster his odds of regaining the presidency. In stooping so low, he is potentially exposing Jewish Americans to defamation and even outright violence should he be defeated by Harris.
It is long past time for Trump to rein in his verbal excesses, lower the temperature, and start behaving like a normal mainstream politician rather than a radical outlier.