One of the defining characteristics of Donald Trump\u2019s politics is the extent to which he positions himself as the arbiter of identity. Trump insists to his supporters that he will make America great again, necessarily defining \u201cAmerica\u201d in restrictive, exclusionary terms. He polices what counts as \u201cAmerican\u201d or \u201cpatriotic\u201d in the same way: Those terms apply only to those who comport with his politics or, more broadly, support his candidacy.<\/p>\n
At least he has some claim to authority on those metrics. He is American and lives in America. But he has also increasingly taken it upon himself to determine who is authentically Jewish and what constitutes authentic Judaism \u2014 an obviously fraught enterprise born of his ongoing irritation that there are people out there who don\u2019t particularly like him.<\/p>\n
The trigger for Trump\u2019s insistence on this point, one offered both in an interview and a social media post in recent days, is the war in Gaza. The terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel\u2019s military response increased the salience of views of Israel in American politics. That escalated further this year as colleges responded to protests on their campuses. Trump has long presented himself as a historically unique champion for Israel and the Jewish people, so he jumped right into the fray.<\/p>\n
He hasn\u2019t made much headway, largely because Jewish Americans vote heavily Democratic. What\u2019s more, Trump\u2019s positions on Israel are generally more reflective of the views of evangelical Christians, many of whom view the nation through the lens of Christian prophecy. That he views himself as having delivered on what his Jewish allies want \u2014 which isn\u2019t necessarily what Jewish Americans want more broadly \u2014 without seeing Jewish support surge appears to frustrate him. So he simply writes off those other Jewish Americans as not (or at least insufficiently) Jewish.<\/p>\n
Writing on social media hours after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) spoke at the Democratic convention, Trump illustrated how this works.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a really bad and poorly delivered speech talking about freedom and fighting for Comrade Kamala Harris for President, yet she hates Israel and will do nothing but make its journey through the complexities of survival as difficult as possible, hoping in the end that it will fail,\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cJudge only by her actions! Yet Shapiro, for strictly political reasons, refused to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had. I have done more for Israel than any President, and frankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it\u2019s not even close. Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump conflates \u201cactions on behalf of Israel\u201d with true Jewishness in part because it\u2019s a metric on which he thinks he can make a case. It\u2019s directly comparable to his claims that he\u2019s done more than anyone else for Black Americans because of a short list of cherry-picked things he did as president. The starting point is that everyone should love him, so he builds a path to that point out of whatever he has at hand. In the case of Jewish Americans, it\u2019s often things that were presented to him by conservative Jewish allies.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t let the hyperbole here slide, though. Trump claiming that, \u201cfrankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it\u2019s not even close\u201d is incredible in both the literal and figurative senses of the word. That Trump\u2019s been making similar claims for so long that it barely merits a shrug is similarly incredible.<\/p>\n
Trump focused on Shapiro in part because of another facet of the effort to turn Jewish Americans against Democrats: suggesting that Shapiro was passed over as Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s running mate specifically because he\u2019s Jewish.<\/p>\n
Speaking to right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday, Trump said this explicitly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t put him on because he\u2019s Jewish. I think he\u2019s highly overrated, too, by the way, but they didn\u2019t put him on because he\u2019s Jewish,\u201d Trump said, before transitioning back to promoting himself. \u201cAnd I just can\u2019t believe, when you look at the polls, where I\u2019m probably up to 50 percent, 40 percent, 45 percent, and what I\u2019ve done for Israel, and what I\u2019ve done, I have been the best president by far for the Jewish people. There\u2019s never been anybody like me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The argument that Democrats are somehow hostile to Jewish people because Shapiro wasn\u2019t selected has been undermined by the positive response to the person Harris did choose as her running mate. Not to mention that it\u2019s hypocritical; Trump didn\u2019t pick a Jewish running mate either. (He picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult.) Harris, of course, is also married to a Jewish man. The Democratic Party also has a number of Jewish leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).<\/p>\n
But he doesn\u2019t count, Trump told Hewitt.<\/p>\n
\u201cChuck Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I\u2019m concerned,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd yet, when it comes to elections, for whatever reason, he\u2019ll be supported by Jewish people. He\u2019s Jewish, and yet he\u2019s totally given up on Israel, as far as I\u2019m concerned. It\u2019s shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schumer has not \u201cgiven up on Israel,\u201d except to the extent that Trump gets to define how people view Israel. Nor is Schumer\u2019s Jewish identity dependent on his political approach to Israel, except to the extent that Trump gets to decide who counts as Jewish.<\/p>\n
Later, when his conversation with Hewitt shifted to the college protests, Trump again disparaged Schumer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say 10, 12, 15 years ago, there was no more powerful, call it a lobby, but there was no more powerful lobby than the Israeli lobby, than the Jewish lobby,\u201d Trump said, repeating a long-standing trope about powerful Jewish organizations. \u201cToday, it\u2019s almost the opposite. You have people like me that are big supporters, but we\u2019re in a tremendous minority. When guys like Schumer go for Hamas and Hezbollah, I mean, look at Schumer. Why would a Jewish person be voting for Schumer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty incredible,\u201d Hewitt (who is Christian) responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would somebody who\u2019s Jewish be voting for these people? If Jewish people vote for her, and I use this expression, they ought to go out,\u201d Trump continued, \u201cbecause Kamala is a person that is very anti-Israel, and very anti-Jewish. But she solves that problem by saying her husband\u2019s Jewish, okay? But that doesn\u2019t, her actions are the worst that we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump is deciding that Harris, despite her family, fails to meet his standard of support for Jewish Americans. Just as, last month, he decided that Harris failed to meet his standard of \u201cBlack.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear what he meant that Harris-voting Jewish people ought to \u201cgo out.\u201d Hewitt didn\u2019t ask. But history does not offer positive stories about political leaders who decide that they can evaluate the legitimacy of Jewish people and their families, suggesting that those who fail the evaluation should be cast out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One of the defining characteristics of Donald Trump\u2019s politics is the extent to which he positions himself as the arbiter of identity. Trump insists to his supporters that he will make America great again, necessarily defining \u201cAmerica\u201d in restrictive, exclusionary terms. He polices what counts as \u201cAmerican\u201d or \u201cpatriotic\u201d in the same way: Those terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}