TRUMP AS ANTI-SEMITE
On May 22, Donald T*** posted the image on the left on his Truth Social website along with its prophetic although rhetorical caption. On his right, in the lighted window, watching with approval, is the alt-right mascot, Pepe the Frog. That’s a blow-up of him in the right-hand photo.
Pepe’s appearance is no accident. The picture is a shout-out to ultra-Conservative Christian Evangelicals and Nationalists as well as White supremacists and far-Right neo-Nazis, all groups who support T**** and with whom T**** curries favor.
In truth, Donald has an extensive history of amplifying white supremacist figures and symbolism as well as anti-semitism. According to his first wife, T**** kept a book of Adolph Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed. He called Jew-hating protesters in Charlottesville “good people.” He has dined at his Florida estate with a Holocaust denier and his New Jersey golf club hosted a Nazi sympathizer.
HIs Republican Party has nominated anti-semites for elected offices, including “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson of North Carolina. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson has a history of using antisemitic tropes. JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Elon Musk have all offered support to a far Right German political party. A former right-wing podcaster now heads the Office of Special Counsel.
This does fly in the face of his outsized support for Israel, but that is not entirely inexplicable. As leaders of Western Democracies who lust for autocratic power, T**** and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are kindred spirits. And the states opposed to Israel are Islamic, and T****’s distain for Moslems is duly noted.
He once claimed that if he lost in 2024 it would be because Jews who do not support him are “disloyal.” During the campus uprisings over Gaza, he charged that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used to be Jewish but isn’t any more because of Schumer’s support for a 2-state solution in Palestine. “Wer ein Jude ist, bestimme ich!” ** exclaims Donald T**** (“I decide who is a Jew.”).
Yet in the past, T**** has called himself best friend American Jews have ever had, which he would not need to profess if it were indeed true. (To quote Shakespeare, he “protests too much, methinks.” *)
In fact, he has gone overboard attempting to curry favor with American Jewry and it is obvious that Trump intentionally surrounds himself with prominent Jews. Not counting his daughter and son-in-law, these include the likes of Stephen Miller, Barry Cohen, Steven Mnuchin, Jason Greenblatt and EPA chief Lee Zeldin to name but a few.
And this as he claims to support Jewish students he says, with little evidence, are oppressed by waves of anti-Semitic hatred on American college campuses. Clearly, T**** would attest that “some of my best friends are Jews.” And we know what that means.
This, then, is the true Donald T****: anti-Semitic to the core. He will deny this of course. But since T**** is a compulsive and pathological liar, you cannot believe a word he says.
Besides, talk is cheap and actions can be duplicitous. As Maya Angelou has counseled, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” To which I would add, watch that they don’t overplay their hand.
*Hamlet, Act III, Scene II.
**Karl Leuger, Mayor of Vienna during Hitler’s formative years.
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