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1. Trump’s Campaign Detour to New York
There’s no good political reason for a presidential candidate to make a campaign stop in New York. The state is almost as blue as can be (arguably a little less blue than in previous elections), and with just over a week until Election Day, holding a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden is a waste of precious campaign time.
But Donald Trump made a point of doing so. He staged a massive rally, lasting hours, which featured a parade of politicians and supporters as his warm-up band. Even Melania spoke, her first time at a campaign event this cycle.
This could have been Donald Trump’s moment to reach out to Jewish voters, at the center of the most Jewish city in America. But he chose not to do so. Trump made a couple of passing references to the Gaza war but avoided, in his one-hour-and-twenty-minute speech, any discussion of Israel, of the way out of the conflict, or of the issue of antisemitism, which is on the mind of many Jewish Americans, especially as the rally took place on the day marking the sixth anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue attack in Pittsburgh.
Trump is polling anywhere between 30 to 40 percent among Jewish voters nationwide, and if he has a real base of Jewish supporters, many of them are concentrated in the Orthodox and Modern Orthodox communities, particularly in New York.
The rally didn’t provide these Jewish supporters with arguments bolstering their backing of Trump or helping them make the case for him within the otherwise skeptical Jewish community.
It also included, as part of a lengthy and cringeworthy list of insults and slurs voiced by the speakers on stage, at least one joke aimed at Jews. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, in a line that certainly wasn’t his most offensive but still in bad taste, suggested that, “When it comes to Israel and Palestine, we’re all thinking the same thing: Settle your stuff already. Best out of three: rock, paper, scissors. You know Palestinians will throw rock every time. And also we know Jews have a hard time throwing that paper.”
Get it? Palestinians are violent stone throwers and Jews are cheapskates. It could have been worse. After all, the same Hinchcliffe minutes earlier called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” The audience, by the way, loved his jokes.
2. Hitler!
Godwin’s law, a satirical internet rule, states that the longer an online debate goes, the greater chances are of invoking comparisons to Adolf Hitler and Nazism. And it applies, apparently, to political campaigns as well.
Months into the presidential race, with early voting already in place and the finish line in clear sight, Hitler has come up as a campaign issue.
In a bombshell New York Times interview, Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, said the former president told him that “Hitler did some good things, too.” The interview coincided with another story, published in The Atlantic, in which two unnamed former officials and John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff from the Trump administration said they heard the former president complain that his generals were not loyal to him. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump reportedly said.
This may not be part of Godwin’s law, but once Hitler is thrown into the debate, there’s no way back.
As expected, Democrats and the Harris campaign wouldn’t let the political opportunity pass. If elected again, Harris argued, Trump would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
Several Jewish Democratic lawmakers, in a press briefing Sunday, leaned into the portrayal of Trump as a Nazi sympathizer. North Carolina Democrat Kathy Manning questioned Trump’s choice of Madison Square Garden for his rally. “He’s chosen Madison Square Garden, I believe, because it has that frightening history. He is sending a message to his base.” The frightening history Manning is referring to is a massive 1939 Nazi rally that took place at the same venue. Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz made the same point, claiming that there was a “direct parallel” between Trump’s rally and that of the Nazis in 1939.
3. Playing the Fascism Card
The question of Trump’s alleged sympathy for Hitler and the accusations of him holding fascist opinions is dominating the final weeks of the presidential election cycle. It is low-hanging fruit, an easy political shot invoking a political rival’s affinity for the worst villain in history can easily paint him as a danger to the nation. Especially among Jewish voters.
But is it smart politics?
Some argue that Dems are going too far. Republican congressional leaders Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell claimed that by calling Trump a “fascist,” Harris is inviting another assassination attempt against the former president. This is a hyperbolic argument, of course, but there is a point to be made that calling your rival a fascist does not help lower the flames of political rhetoric and does not support the image of a unifier that Harris is trying to establish.
Furthermore, it may also be the wrong political message at this point in the race. Some Democratic insiders have argued that Harris should instead focus on positive messaging and should flesh out her policies to swing voters who do not necessarily know much about her positions.
4. Will Trump End the Gaza War?
Michigan is one of the biggest challenges for both candidates. With polls showing a dead heat (with an insignificant 1 percent lead for Harris), much of the effort in this swing state is directed at its Muslim and Arab community, which is estimated at 500,000.
For the first time in decades, the Arab and Muslim community in Michigan is getting a lot of attention. The ongoing war in Gaza, and the stalwart support Biden and Harris have been giving Israel has led many voters from the community to withhold their support for Harris in the upcoming election.
Looking to seize on this trend, Trump, during a Saturday rally in the state, invited local Muslim leaders to the stage to state their endorsement. “We, as Muslims, stand with President Trump because he promises peace—he promises peace, not war,” said Imam Belal Alzuhairi. “We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine.” The next day, Trump recalled the meeting with the Michigan-based Muslim leaders, saying that “they just want peace,” and boasting his poll results among Muslim and Arab Americans.
Will Trump end the war? And how does that fit in with his promise to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a free hand in conducting the conflict?
Trump, who rarely gets into details when discussing foreign policy, has centered his message to voters around the promise to transition America into an era of world peace, while suggesting that a Harris presidency could lead to World War III. “I will stop the chaos in the Middle East,” Trump said Sunday during his New York rally. He had also mentioned, earlier this year, the need for Israel to bring the Gaza war to an end. “You want to get it over with. It has to get over with fast, but have victory, get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop,” Trump said at an August press conference, referring to a conversation he had with Netanyahu.
Trump seems to hold conflicting views on the Gaza war. He wants it over as soon as possible, but he also wants the United States to give Bibi everything he asks for and to support all his policies, which include continuing the war with no end in sight.
This apparent conflict can be understood in one of two ways: Either Trump is using the issue as a political cudgel—vowing to end the war when courting antiwar voters and pledging full support for an Israeli leader who wants to continue the war when it serves the cause of criticizing Trump’s political rivals. Or, Trump may be going back to his “art of the deal” days. The former president may believe that he holds the key to resolving the Israel-Hamas conflict in a way that no one else has thought about or tried yet. Trump may believe in his power to both end the war and support Netanyahu at the same time, thanks to his self-proclaimed deal-making skills.
Either way, there’s no plan on the table right now. While Harris has taken heat from pro-Palestinian voters for continuing Biden’s pro-Israel policies and from pro-Israel Americans for supporting Biden’s (very mild) pressure on Netanyahu, Trump has outlined no plan, and therefore he has been able to avoid this type of criticism from either side.
5. Did Israel’s Attack on Iran Impact the Race?
Conventional wisdom in Israel these past weeks has been that Biden was pressing Netanyahu to avoid attacking Iran, or to limit the scope of the anticipated attack, out of political considerations. Biden and the Democrats feared, according to this line of thought, that a significant Israeli onslaught would drag the region into a full-scale war, force America to get involved in the fighting and send oil prices skyrocketing, thus hurting Harris’s chances on November 5.
On Friday night, Israel launched its attack. It was measured and targeted, causing severe damage to Iran’s air defense systems and to its ballistic missile program but leaving the nuclear sights and oil production facilities unharmed.
As of now, the carefully calibrated attack seems to have worked well for all sides. Israel has restored its deterrence and has proven that it can attack Iran directly and effectively and may do so again in the future. The Biden administration also got what it had asked for—an attack significant enough to put Iran on notice, but sufficiently accurate and limited to avoid an Iranian retaliatory counterattack.
Moreover, it didn’t have any impact on the presidential elections. Both candidates expressed support for Israel and both warned Iran from taking further action.
That’s good news not only for Harris but also for Israel. With an ongoing seven-front war and growing international isolation, the last thing Israel needs is to be seen as meddling in U.S. elections or as tilting, due to its reckless conduct, the American political balance.
Top image: Trump holds a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City (Credit: Gage Skidmore / Ajay Suresh).