Trump stands by antisemitic trope that sparked anger among Jewish Americans

Donald Trump on Wednesday repeated an antisemitic trope that has prompted dismay among prominent American Jews, saying that voting Democratic was “disloyal to Jewish people and … very disloyal to Israel”.

Prominent US Jews have reacted with shock and disdain to Trump’s renewed adoption of a longstanding antisemitic trope that implied that American Jews had divided loyalty to America and to Israel. Over almost 24 hours he has repeatedly described Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats as showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty”.

The president ignited the storm when he appeared to accuse Jewish Americans of having dual loyalties in remarks from the Oval Office on Tuesday. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, pointed out on Twitter that charges of disloyalty “have long been used to attack Jews … It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football”.

J Street, the progressive Jewish American lobbying group, released a statement in which it called Trump’s remarks “dangerous and shameful”. It noted that 70% of American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton against Trump in the 2016 presidential race, adding: “This vast majority of our community rejected and continues to abhor the xenophobia, bigotry and extremism of Donald Trump and his allies.”

Trump reiterated his contentious comments on Wednesday morning, bragging about the praise he had received overnight from a notorious rightwing conspiracy theorist. Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative talk radio host who has championed many virulent untruths, including the “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a US citizen, lauded Trump on air as “the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world”.

In a stream of tweets, Trump cited Root as saying that Israelis loved the US president “like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God.”

A reference to the second coming was unfortunate, given the context.

The president returned to the subject yet again later on Wednesday as he addressed reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before his Marine One departure to Kentucky, where he was scheduled to speak to military veterans. Despite the furor surrounding his claims, he made his most specific suggestion yet that American Jews intrinsically have divided fealty.

“If you vote for a Democrat, you’re being disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel,” he said, denying that his words were antisemitic.

Trump ignited the storm on Tuesday afternoon when he unleashed a barrage of disparaging comments against the Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Trump, who recently encouraged Israel to block Tlaib’s visit to see her family in the occupied territories, lashed out after the congresswomen criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for denying them entry, vowing that the Israeli leader would not “succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us”.

Calling Omar a “disaster” for Jews, Trump said he didn’t “buy” the tears Tlaib had shed Monday at an emotional press conference during which Tlaib talked about her decision not to travel to Israel to see her elderly grandmother, who lives in the occupied West Bank.

“Where has the Democratic party gone?” Trump asked reporters at the White House. “Where have they gone, where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

This was not the first time that Trump has been castigated for apparently invoking the “dual loyalty” antisemitic trope. In April, he called Netanyahu “your prime minister” in front of the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.

Leading Jewish Democratic politicians also excoriated Trump for his comments. Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is a contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination, pronounced himself to be “a proud Jewish person”.

Sanders said: “I have no concerns about voting Democratic. And in fact I intend to vote for a Jewish man to become the next president of the United States.”

Ted Deutch, a Democratic congressman from Florida who has supported aspects of Trump’s Israel policy in the past, including the decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem, was also harshly critical. Talking to the CBS franchise in Miami, he called on Trump to apologize.

“It would be an enormous start if we can all acknowledge there is no place for language like that,” he said.

Deutch, who is Jewish, told the TV station that after Trump made his contentious remarks he had received a text from a friend whose 98-year-old mother was a Holocaust survivor. She wanted the congressman to know, he said, “that the language she heard today was language she heard as a kid in Germany”.

Deutch added: “I’m not making a comparison. I’m simply telling you how people who have experienced the worst heard a statement like that.”