It’s beginning to look a lot like Donald Trump expects to lose the election and he is setting up the Jews to take the fall. With Kamala Harris moving ahead in several polls and Jews steadfastly staying in her corner, he appears worried and looking for scapegoats.
The former president is someone who shuns all responsibility for anything that doesn’t go his way, and he is never at a loss for who and what to blame for his failures. Speaking to two Jewish groups in Washington last week, he warned, “If I don’t win this election… the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” What’s more, “If I don’t win, I believe Israel will be eradicated.
He told them voting for Vice President Harris is “voting for the enemy” and repeated his familiar lies that she “doesn’t like Jewish people,” “hates Israel,” and will bring about Israel’s “total annihilation.” The self-anointed savior declared: “Only I can save Israel.”
One event was supposed to be a conference to denounce antisemitism, but he embraced and fed it. The GOP nominee has a long history of antisemitic comments peppered throughout his campaigns, social media posts, and various tropes. This latest display comes at a time when Jew-hatred has been on the rise across this country in the wake of the Israel-Hamas War, and his rhetoric threatens to encourage incidents of harassment and violence.
Trump has repeatedly accused Jews – at least those who don’t support him – of hating their religion, dual loyalty, disloyalty to Israel, to the United States, to their faith, and most of all to him. He has said Jews are “too liberal” in their voting and “don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.”
Woven throughout his speeches last week, and many others, was the usual bragging laced with a foul brew of self-pity, warnings, threats, and a heavy serving of kvetching that he doesn’t get enough credit for all his great accomplishments.
“With all I have done for Israel, I wasn’t treated right... I really haven’t been treated very well,” moaned the man with an insatiable appetite for praise. “If Obama had done [the Abraham Accords], they would have had every single prize ever devised by man. I did it. Nobody said a thing.”
HIS WARNING to the Jews was also a dog whistle aimed at his conservative white Evangelical Protestant base, some of whom have hailed him as sent by God to save their Christian country. He wants them to know whom to blame if their false messiah loses.
Trump calls himself “a very proud Christian” who will use his second term to defend Christianity from those on the Left, and tells those supporters “No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.” His campaign is saturated with Christian symbolism and sells caps and T-shirts declaring “God, Guns, and Trump.”
His base includes an alarming number of Holocaust deniers, Nazi sympathizers, white supremacists, and Christian nationalists. He has invited many to speak at his rallies and dine with him at his Florida home.
This transactional president thinks the Jews owe him for all he has done for Israel (on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Adelson family and other wealthy Jews have invested in his various campaigns).
Most Jewish leaders were quick to condemn Trump’s remarks. The American Jewish Committee’s description was typical: “Outrageous and dangerous.” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said, “It puts a target on American Jews” and incites violence by “those who wish us harm.”
Loyalists like the Republican Jewish Coalition disagreed, calling it a “tour de force in support of the Jewish community.” Another follower said he was just getting Jews “energized” to vote for him. Some shrugged it off as “Trump being Trump.” They point to how much he does for Israel, loves his Jewish grandchildren, and hangs medals on his billionaire Jewish donors.
Even if Trump wins, he is unlikely to get even a third of the Jewish vote, which will undoubtedly feed his grievances and lead to even more inflammatory outbursts.
HIS THREAT to hold Jews responsible for his defeat was not “tough love,” as he called it, but a threat from someone who has said repeatedly that if he returns to the White House will use his power for “retribution.”
Trump always has someone to blame, so it is no surprise he is once again targeting history’s favorite scapegoat. Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. Trump has adopted much of the rhetoric of “American first” populism, a movement that included many sympathetic to the Nazi cause.
His own running mate, Sen. JD Vance, saw that in him early on, calling Trump “reprehensible” and an “idiot” who might become the “American Hitler.”
Trump is consumed with hatred, resentment, grievances, and anger, and seeks to tap and magnify similar feelings in his political base. It shows in his rhetoric, especially when he feeds off the energy of his rallies. He echoes the rhetoric of dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, using their terms like “vermin,” “subhuman,” “enemy of the people,” “enemy of the state,” “poisoning the blood of our country,” “animals and beasts” to dehumanize his opponents.
The evidence is clear. Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States. Equally clear: He is a grave menace to a Jewish population that is almost certain to reject his brand of bigoted populism at the polls in November.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and the former American Israel Public Affairs Committee legislative director.