“Are you ready for some tachlis?” GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson asked, her smile beaming and her red-sequined jacket sparkling as she stood before a gathering of 150 or so Jewish Republican donors and supporters at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill on Thursday evening.
While many in the meeting room understood what Adelson was saying—that the man she was introducing was going to get down to brass tacks—they may not have expected some of them to be so sharp. (More on that in a bit.)
“He is a true friend of the Jewish people,” Adelson said of former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. “He will protect Israel without worrying about what the rest of the world might think.”
Trump walked on stage as the audience rose to their feet, cell phones held aloft to capture the moment. He began with nods to all the Republican lawmakers in attendance, including Senators Ted Cruz (TX), whom he clearly enjoyed ribbing several times throughout his remarks, Joni Ernst (IA), Rick Scott (FL), and Bill Hagerty (TN). He acknowledged Republican Jewish Coalition Chair Norm Coleman and called out a longer list of Republican House members who were present, many from Florida and also including Virginia Foxx (NC), Mike Lawler (NY) and Elise Stefanik (NY). “What she did to that woman at Harvard with the big, fat glasses was a beautiful thing to watch,” Trump said about Stefanik, and of Lawler, “Boy, he likes me a lot better than he used to.”
The event was dubbed “Fighting Antisemitism in America,” and while much of the news coverage has focused on what amounted to a guilt trip Trump laid on Jewish Americans who support his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, he did address the stated topic.
“I’m here today to tell the Jewish-American community that this ugly tide of antisemitic, pro-Hamas bigotry and hate will be turned back and crushed starting at noon on January 21, 2025,” Trump vowed. “With your vote I will be your defender, your protector and the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.” He ran through a list of disturbing incidents that have occurred in the United States since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, including vandalism at synagogues and physical attacks against Jews in public spaces, as well as documented instances of antisemitism at American universities. These included “Jew-exclusion zones” at UCLA, activists at Princeton who displayed a Hezbollah flag, and professors at several elite schools who praised Hamas’s actions on October 7.“My first week back in the Oval Office, my administration will inform every college president that if [they] do not end antisemitic propaganda, they will lose their accreditation and federal taxpayer support,” Trump said, which brought the audience to its feet again. One woman raised clenched fists high in the air and looked upward, exclaiming, “Yes! Finally!”“Please, sit down,” Trump said, and continued, “I will inform every educational institution in our land that if they permit violence, harm or threats against Jewish students, the schools will be held accountable for violations of civil rights law.”
Trump soon pivoted to Israel. Adelson, in her introduction, had listed Trump’s actions in support of the Jewish state—moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, facilitating the Abraham Accords and pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement. Trump repeated these achievements (the last one garnering the most enthusiastic response of the night) and expressed disbelief that, after all that, he only got 29 percent of the Jewish vote in 2020, having received 25 percent in 2016. “I haven’t been treated right, and you haven’t been treated right,” he said. And then, putting his current support from Jewish-American voters at 40 percent (unsubstantiated), he uttered the since-oft-quoted line: “In my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40 percent.” (Trump would repeat this idea at the Israeli-American Council conference later that night and get a slightly more mixed response.) In speaking to the audience of Jewish-American donors and lawmakers, he referred to Israel as “your country.”
Does Trump know he’s peddling an antisemitic trope when he suggests that support for Israel should be the top priority for all Jewish Americans in picking a president? And more to the point, does his enthusiastic audience know it, or care? Regarding the dual loyalty trope, one can assume they see antisemitism in sowing distrust of Jews, but these Republicans also seemed to agree with their nominee that Jews who support Harris should “have their heads examined” (a frequent Trump line that, in standup comedy parlance, killed at the Hyatt Regency Thursday night).
I put these questions to Ira N. Forman, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization and the director of Moment’s Antisemitism Monitor. “When you call someone antisemitic it presupposes that they hate Jews. I don’t know what’s going on in Trump’s head or in the heas of Republicans who support him,” said Forman, who speculated that Trump’s remarks probably made a fair number of audience members cringe inwardly. “Is [what he said] antisemitic? I think it’s more useful to say it’s damaging and ignorant.” Describing the tin ear Republicans have displayed in talking about Israel in the past, Forman acknowledged that believing Israel is the main issue for all Jewish American voters “is more than having a tin ear…It leads to the Nick Fuenteses and Tucker Carlsons of the world laying blame—just like what’s happened [to legal Haitian immigrants] in Springfield, OH.” Blaming the Jews, Forman says, is classic antisemitism.
“He’s been doing the dual loyalty thing for a long time. Some in the GOP seem quite comfortable with that, though some are not,” Forman said, citing Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, as an example of a leader who voiced criticism of Trump’s latest remarks. “It is concerning for him or any candidate to say, ‘If I lose, it’s because of a specific group,’” Diament, who was at the fundraising event, told The New York Times on Friday. “That is the kind of accusation that can be misused and abused by people who are enemies of the Jewish people.” The ADL and AJC issued even stronger rebukes. “Here we go again,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X. “This speech likely will spark more hostility and further inflame an already bad situation. Calling out hate is important, but I can’t understate how the message is diluted and damaged when you employ hate to make your point.”
If any supporters in the room shared this sentiment, it certainly wasn’t apparent in the rousing applause Trump received at the conclusion of his remarks.