Making Sense of Trump 2.0

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1. The Trump Jews Love and the Trump Jews Fear

It’s a Washington phenomenon that never ceases to amaze: In the course of one day, the nation’s ruling political landscape changes. Those who moments ago were at the helm of decision-making are now frantically sending out their resumes and pulling old connections to find their next position in their post-government careers. Others, some fresh off the campaign and some from the new president’s inner circles, are settling in at government agencies they’ve never set foot in before and getting used to their new titles, already adorning their office doors. 

Nowhere has this transformation been more visible than at the White House. On Monday, as the building gradually emptied out, staffers were seen taking one last photo on the front lawn, accompanying relatives for a final tour and sending out farewell emails to their entire contact list. By Tuesday, the freezing White House campus was awash with new faces—some still trying to get their entry pass approved, others scrambling to find their way around. One senior official in the incoming administration canceled a meeting with a group he had intended to host. “He told us he just couldn’t get to his office yet,” recalled one of the group members.

This transition has proved to be especially tricky for the Jewish community—more so than ever before.

Many Jewish activists have a set of predetermined ideas about Donald Trump, now the 47th president. Most of them did not vote for him, nor do they support his policies. Some openly revile Trump and are quick to denounce him as the greatest danger to America’s future.

And while that same Trump is now occupying the Oval Office, another Donald Trump came to town on Monday, one who has just played a key role in releasing Israeli hostages and who has not shied away from pressuring Israel’s prime minister into signing the cease-fire deal. A Donald Trump who has repeatedly shown compassion to the families whose loved ones are still held in Gaza.

For Israelis, this has never been a dilemma. Oblivious to the concerns of American Jews about Trump’s domestic agenda, most Israelis have always liked Trump and now view him as a powerful savior who can single-handedly reshape the Middle East.

It is way more complicated for American Jews, most of whom hold liberal views and object to Trump’s set of values. How do you treat a president who prides himself on having assembled a Supreme Court that overturned the right to abortion, who ran a campaign based on anti-immigrant xenophobia, and who has aligned himself with some of the worst white nationalists and conspiracists, but at the same time has emerged as the only leader able to force Israel into ending the Gaza war and who could make the two-state vision, so dear to American Jewish liberals, into reality?

2. The Art of the Hostage Deal

The weeks before Trump officially took office were marked with a rare mix of bipartisan cooperation.

The partnership between Biden’s and Trump’s Middle East teams was remarkable. Envoys of the outgoing and incoming presidents sat around the same table, strategized together and divided tasks, all leading up to the agreement and to the beginning of the hostage release process.

At the same time, both sides claimed victory. Biden and his team stressed time and again that the deal signed was the deal that Biden himself put forth back in May and that it was finalized thanks to the tireless efforts of Biden’s team in Washington and on the ground in Qatar. Trump tells a different story. “Biden couldn’t get it done, it was only the imposition I put on as a deadline that got it done,” Trump said on Tuesday.

As in many cases, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Biden deserves full credit for identifying the path to an agreement and for using all his diplomatic might to get both sides to agree. Trump is owed a debt of gratitude for making the final push, the one that convinced both Israel and Hamas that they’d better go ahead and sign the deal or else, as Trump put it, “all hell will break loose.”

In the weeks leading up to the deal and the days after its implementation, Trump proved to be a valuable player. Alongside his threatening tone and repeated warnings, he deployed his talented Middle East negotiator Steve Witkoff to the region to help seal the deal. He also made sure to back the negotiating push with a Trump-style gesture. On Inauguration Day, hours after taking the oath of office, Trump stopped by the Capital One Arena for the indoor parade that replaced the traditional procession from Capitol Hill to the White House. Before his speech, Witkoff called onto the stage members of hostage families and two freed hostages who came to Washington to attend the inauguration. They stood next to Trump while he delivered his speech, watched by thousands in the arena and millions at home. “It felt as if he was tying himself to the commitment to see the deal through and to end this saga of the hostages,” said Liron Berman, who was among the family members called to the stage. Liron’s twin brothers Gali and Ziv are still held hostage in Gaza.

For the hostage families, as well as for many Israelis and Jewish Americans, Trump is now their best hope for seeing the deal fully implemented and for bringing home all remaining hostages. His tough stance and show of commitment have proved to be effective and could ensure that neither side reneges on the deal when it reaches the end of the first phase, at which time 33 hostages are to have been released, and entering the second phase, which includes a full cessation of the war and return of the rest of the living and dead hostages.

3.  A World With No Wars

In his inauguration speech, Trump used the Gaza deal to illustrate his foreign policy goal for the next four years: “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be—a peacemaker and a unifier. I’m pleased to say that, as of yesterday, one day before I assumed office, the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families.”

Taken on its own, this could sound like a commitment coming from Bernie Sanders and the progressive left. It is exactly what liberal Jewish Americans want to hear—America pursuing peace around the world, especially in the Middle East.

Regardless of whether Trump meant it, and if he has the ability and energy to become the world’s “peacemaker,” this statement is worthy of a deeper look. Could Trump, with his aggressive approach, his knack for disregarding norms and doctrines, and his agnostic approach toward the various players in the Middle East, prove to be more effective than all the Democratic presidents who came to the issue with a true belief in the need for peace and justice but failed to land a deal? If Trump demonstrates the same insistence and arm-twisting skills he showed during the Gaza cease-fire negotiations, he may end up as the hero of the majority of the American Jewish community. 

4. And Then There’s Everything Else

Helping reach a cease-fire deal is a huge achievement, and Trump has already won his place in history for playing a role in reaching the deal that will save the lives of the hostages languishing in the Gaza tunnels. 

But it is still Donald Trump, it’s still the MAGA movement, and it is still an entire world of domestic policies and decrees that drove an overwhelming majority of American Jews to vote against Trump last November.

In less than 48 hours in office, Trump has taken by storm almost every liberal-supported policy on immigration, climate, civil rights, LGBTQ rights and economic policy. 

The list of Trump’s executive orders reads like an attempt to go against almost each and every issue the Jewish community has rallied for. Most striking, perhaps, is the broad pardon given to the January 6 insurrectionists, including leaders of the Proud Boys, a group the ADL has said “serves as a tent for misogynistic, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic and anti-LGBTQ+ ideologies and other forms of hate—including antisemitism,” and the Oath Keepers, an extreme-right militia. 

It hasn’t been an easy week for most Jewish-Americans, who had to watch Trump’s right-hand man Elon Musk greet the crowd at Trump’s post-inauguration event with what looked like a Nazi salute (the ADL, by the way, saw nothing wrong with that); to hear Trump refer to the January 6 rioters as “hostages” while standing next to an Israeli young women who was actually held hostage by Hamas; and to try and keep up with new orders coming out on an hourly basis, including those halting civil rights litigation and freezing refugee resettlement. 

This is what life looks like for Jewish Americans in the next four years: an administration bent on setting back all progress made on issues dear to the centrist and liberal parts of the Jewish community, which are the majority, while at the same time potentially making historic pro-peace strides in the Middle East.

5. The Most Jewish Message to Trump, Delivered By a Bishop

Giving a voice to the concerns over Trump’s domestic policy initiatives was Bishop Mariann Budde, who heads the Washington Episcopal Diocese.

Her sermon, delivered in a bipartisan prayer session honoring Trump after the inauguration, left the newly sworn-in president furious, but put in simple terms what many in the Jewish community had been fearing after hearing Trump’s inauguration speech and watching his blitz of executive orders. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she pleaded with Trump.

Watch Bishop Budde’s entire speech here. It’s sure to be echoed at your nearest Reform or Conservative synagogue in days to come.

Top image credit: Gage Skidmore / Cezary Piwowarczyk.