Trump: Jews who vote for Democrats show ‘lack of knowledge’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that any Jewish people who vote for Democrats are showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” prompting an outcry from critics who said the president’s remarks were promoting anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Trump made the comment in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office ahead of a meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.
Trump began by lashing out at Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., questioning the sincerity of her tears at a news conference where she talked about her decision not to travel to Israel to see her elderly grandmother, who lives in the occupied West Bank.
“Yesterday, I noticed for the first time, Tlaib with the tears,” Trump said.
“All of the sudden, she starts with tears, tears . ... I don’t buy it for a second, because I’ve seen her in a very vicious mood at campaign rallies, my campaign rallies, before she was a congresswoman. I said, ‘Who is that?’ And I saw a woman that was violent and vicious and out of control.”
He then went on to attack Democrats more generally over the views of Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Both women have long been fierce critics of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.
They support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a global protest of Israel known as BDS.
“Where has the Democratic Party gone?” Trump asked. “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.”
Critics on both sides of the aisle immediately pointed out that Trump’s use of the word “disloyalty” had echoes of antiSemitic tropes accusing Jews of dual allegiance.
Omar was criticized by members of both parties for saying during a town hall earlier this year that she wanted to discuss “the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Omar responded to the president’s remark with a two-word tweet. “Oh my,” she said, followed by a facepalm emoji.
The Republican Jewish Coalition defended Trump, arguing that the president was speaking about people being disloyal to themselves rather than to Israel.