Donald Trump — former president, Republican nominee, and convicted felon — faced backlash Wednesday as he used controversial language in an attempt to woo Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party.
Trump repeated on Fox News his insults of Jewish Democratic voters he said "should have their head examined," arguing antisemitism was behind Vice President Kamala Harris' decision to choose as a running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) over Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA).
"My head is fine," national security attorney and political pundit Bradly Moss snapped in response. " if this means I'm just a bad Jew."
Fleischer, onetime press secretary to former President George W. Bush, is one of many Republicans who have insisted — as Trump controversially assented on a recent podcast — that a blue vote represents a betrayal of Jewish identity.
This rhetoric arrives as the Israel-Hamas War enters its eleventh month and has already claimed tens of thousands of lives, many of them civilians.
President Joe Biden pledged support for Israel after the devastating attack on Oct. 7 and has since worked toward a ceasefire agreement.
Trump and his allies have thrown support behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump invited to his social club Mar-a-Lago in July, and claimed Jewish Democrats hate their own religion.
This messaging has been described as incendiary and, when Trump repeated it on Fox News Wednesday morning, spurred frustration.
Political commentator Brian Krassenstein professed himself unconvinced that Harris' decision not to choose Shapiro — who reportedly expressed doubts about abandoning his own executive position — was influenced by antisemitism within the Democratic Party.
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"Trump Just claimed on Fox & Friends that Harris' pick of Walz is 'very insulting to Jewish people' since they didn't pick Shapiro," he wrote. "As a Jewish American, I can say that I'm not insulted one bit."
Krassenstein noted that of 9 out of 10 Jewish U.S. Senators are Democrats, 24 Democrats of 26 Jewish House members are Democrats, and the nation's four Jewish governors are democrats.
Paul Rudnick, humorist for the New Yorker, made this point in a more satirical fashion in response to similar messaging from House Speaker Mike Johnson.
"Mike Johnson claims Josh Shapiro wasn’t chosen as VP because of his 'Jewish heritage,' Rudnick wrote. "Only a bottle of rancid mayo on stale white bread like Johnson would use the phrase 'Jewish heritage.' Keep Josh’s faith out of your anti-Semitic mouth."
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Politfix podcast host Brian Beutler noted Trump once hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago and recently appeared on a podcast that platformed the neo-Nazi.
"pretend to believe the Nick Fuentes party is hospitable to Jews," Beutler wrote. "What of the heartwarming time Trump hired his Jewish son-in-law to collect bribes as White House adviser?"
However Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a historian of Israeli and Jewish affairs, dissented, arguing that pro-Palestine members of the Democratic Party were putting Jewish voters in a difficult position.
"I have no love for Netanyahu or for many policies of Israel," she wrote. "But I do think some diaspora jews are selling out their identities/priorities to the democratic party's underbelly of left-wing antisemitism since they are so anti-trump (validly so) that they don't want to address it."
