Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed up a blatantly antisemitic claim about Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband.
During an interview on WABC 77’s radio show Sid & Friends in the Morning, Trump agreed with host Sid Rosenberg, who criticized Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, on the basis of his faith.
“They tell me that this Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, Mr. President, is Jewish,” Rosenberg said. “He’s Jewish like Bernie Sanders is Jewish. Are you kidding me? He’s a crappy Jew, he’s a horrible Jew!”
“Yes, yes,” Trump replied under Rosenberg’s rant. As Trump made perfectly clear throughout the interview, to him, the only good Jewish person is one who’s voting Republican.
During the interview, Trump repeated his old attack against Jewish Americans who refused to support his presidential bid.
“Any 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. “If you love Israel, or if you’re Jewish—because a lot of Jewish people do not like Israel, and they happen to be in New York, you know that?”
“Yes,” chirped Rosenberg, whose radio talk show is local to New York City.
“If you are Jewish,” Trump continued, “regardless of Israel, if you’re Jewish, if you vote for a Democrat you’re a fool. An absolute fool.”
Trump has previously suggested that any Jewish person who did not vote for him “does not love Israel” and “should be spoken to.” The former president seems to have a pretty limited idea of what a Jewish person can and cannot think. He also claimed in March that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.”
On Tuesday, Trump complained that Democrats no longer felt afraid to criticize Israel.
“You know, 15 years ago the strongest lobby in all of Washington was Israel. It was by far the strongest. Nobody would say anything bad about Israel! Today, it’s like nobody says anything good—except for Republicans by the way,” Trump griped.
???? In radio interview today with @sidandfriends77, Trump repeated his attack on Jewish Americans voting for Dems.
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) July 30, 2024
THEN…. He agreed with the interviewer that Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, is a “crappy Jew” and “a horrible Jew.”
Listen ???? https://t.co/FEGwD30Tih pic.twitter.com/gyno4khPvg
While the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is not the biggest lobby in U.S. politics, its impact is still felt in crucial races. Earlier this year, AIPAC gave a whopping $14.5 million in the New York Democratic primary election to George Latimer, funding his ultimately successful effort to unseat progressive Representative Jamaal Bowman, a staunch critic of Israel.
During the radio interview, Trump also claimed that Harris looked uncomfortable during her meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he said suggested that she secretly dislikes Jewish people—despite being married to one, of course.
“You can see the disdain,” Trump said. “Number one, she doesn’t like Israel. Number two, she doesn’t like Jewish people. You know it, I know it, and everybody knows it and nobody wants to say it.”
Trump’s lack of logic on this subject is nothing new. The Republican presidential nominee has previously asserted that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party had “abandoned” Israel, despite the fact that the U.S. has continued to fund Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians and created an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.
