LAS VEGAS, NV - Former President Trump suggested that he could win up to half of the Jewish vote in the 2024 election as he criticized Jewish Americans who don't support him in his showdown with Vice President Kamala Harris.
"We're probably around the 50 percent mark," Trump said on Thursday in live-streamed comments as he addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And the former president and GOP nominee claimed, without evidence, that Israel "will no longer exist" if Harris wins the White House in November's election.
Trump addressed the group of Republican Jewish leaders, donors, and activists, days after the bodies of six Israeli hostages, including Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were recovered in Gaza. The hostages were taken by Hamas last October during an attack on Israel that ignited the eleven-month-long war in Gaza.
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The Harris campaign, responding to Trump's address, pointed to the former president's past criticism of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating Biden on his 2020 election victory over Trump.
"Donald Trump has made it obvious he would turn on Israel in a moment if it suited his personal interests, and in fact he has done so in the past," Harris national security spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein wrote in a statement. "Meanwhile, the Vice President has been incredibly clear: She has been a lifelong supporter of the State of Israel as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people."
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While supportive of Israel's right to defend itself, President Biden's relationship with Netanyahu has grown increasingly strained during the current war. On Monday, the president said he didn't think the Israeli leader was doing enough to help foster a hostage deal with Hamas.
The vice president has aimed to balance her support for Israel - which she spotlighted last month during her address at the Democratic National Convention - with her acknowledgment of the high civilian death toll caused by Israel's military offensive in Gaza. While Republicans are unified in support of Israel, many progressives in the Democratic Party have been vocal in their criticism of Israel's war with Hamas.
Trump, who has repeatedly questioned how Jewish Americans could vote for the Democrats, reiterated "I don’t understand how anybody can support them — and I say it constantly — if you had them to support and you were Jewish, you have to have your head examined."
"Who are the 50 percent of Jewish people that are voting for these people that hate Israel and don’t like the Jewish people?" Trump asked as he once again charged that the Democrats "have been very bad to you."
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Ari Fleischer, a Republican Jewish Coalition board member, spotlighted the rising Jewish support for GOP presidential candidates as he spoke with reporters following Trump’s speech.
Fleischer, a longtime Republican strategist, former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor, said that former President George H.W. Bush won 11% of the Jewish vote in 1992, but that his boss, former President George W. Bush, won 25% of the Jewish vote in his 2004 re-election. Trump won approximately 30% of the Jewish vote four years ago.
Fleischer wouldn’t predict what percentage of the Jewish vote Trump would capture this year, but said it could near 50% in some battleground states, as they consider casting Republican ballots.
"The ears of the Jewish community are open this cycle more than previously, because of the events around the world and what we see in America," Fleischer said. "It's one thing for it to be theoretical, it's now physical. It's palpable on the American street."
He added that "what's changed in this cycle is this palpable sense of fear because of what's happening in America, because of what's happening on campuses, because of what happened in Israel on October 7, and every day since…the American Jewry has never had their ears more open to potentially voting Republican than in this cycle."
Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks told reporters that the group’s political arm has beefed up its data operations by building what he touted as "the only real viable voter file of Jewish voters in the country" to turnout the vote.
"We have quietly been building under the radar over the last several years. We have been putting staff and deploying resources," Brooks shared. "So we now have staff in Nevada, we have paid staff in Georgia, we have paid staff in Michigan, we have paid staff in Pennsylvania and in Arizona. And we have been doing this quietly since the last election, building up to this moment."
Brooks said the group is spending millions of dollars on digital and TV ads, direct mail, phone calls and door knocking and other canvassing efforts to get out the vote – what he described as "the whole gamut."
Trump was introduced at the gathering by Miriam Adelson, the billionaire Republican megadonor, who along with her late husband, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson were major backers of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Adelson, who is currently helping bankroll a super PAC that supports Trump, called him "our best friend" and added that she's "eagerly awaiting for him to enter the White House and to save the Jewish people."
