Buried in his efforts to convince a sympathetic audience that he deserved to return to the White House, Donald Trump made an important admission about a long-standing frustration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith all I have done for Israel,\u201d he said at a campaign event ostensibly centered on antisemitism, \u201cI received only 24 percent of the Jewish vote. Now think of this. I really haven\u2019t been treated very well, but that\u2019s the story of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed it is.<\/p>\n
In Trump\u2019s estimation, he deserves both credit and unwavering support from Jewish Americans because of the things he did on Israel\u2019s behalf as president. He said as much at the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, I\u2019m the best friend they ever had. And still in 2020 \u2014 so remember, I got 24, 25 percent [of the Jewish vote in 2016]. Now, I did all of these things and I got 29 percent,\u201d Trump complained. \u201cThink of it. So I wasn\u2019t treated right. But it\u2019s not me that\u2019s been treated badly. It\u2019s Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a recurring theme of Trump\u2019s politics. Making his pitch to skeptical constituencies, he cobbles together accomplishments that he then promotes as exceptional, as the pinnacle of what those groups might have wanted. Black Americans want opportunity zones. Jewish people want the American Embassy to be in Jerusalem. He delivered on these things \u2014 but they still don\u2019t love him? How can that be?<\/p>\n
The answer, consistently, is that what Trump delivers isn\u2019t necessarily what those constituencies seek. A few months after the 2020 election, Pew Research Center published research showing the gap between Trump\u2019s presentation of his accomplishments and how Jewish Americans viewed them. Most Jewish Americans gave him credit for being friendly to Israel, yes. But a plurality saw him as unfriendly to them. A majority indicated that his handling of Israel policy was fair or poor, contrary to Trump\u2019s apparent belief.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s exposure to the interests and desires of Jewish Americans is largely centered among conservative and right-wing Jewish people, a minority of the American Jewish population. He tends to conflate Jewish interests with Israeli interests, often explicitly.<\/p>\n
He did so at another point in his comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to defeat Kamala Harris more than any other people on Earth. Israel, I believe, has to defeat her,\u201d Trump told the audience. \u201cYou know that? And I\u2019ve never said this before, I\u2019m thinking, Miriam\u201d \u2014 referring to his ally and donor Miriam Adelson \u2014 \u201cmore than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her.\u201d<\/p>\n
What attracted the most attention in his comments, though, was Trump\u2019s claim that the 2024 presidential contest depended on Jewish voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter having done all of that, having been the best president, the greatest president by far, by far \u2014 a poll just came out; I\u2019m at 40 percent,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThat means you got 60 percent voting for somebody that hates Israel. And, I say it. \u2026 It\u2019s only because of the Democrat hold or curse on you. You can\u2019t let this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
A recent Pew poll showed Trump trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by a nearly 2 to 1 margin among Jewish voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,\u201d he added a bit later. \u201cIf I\u2019m at 40 percent? Think of it, that means 60 percent are voting for Kamala who in particular is a bad Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a ridiculous assertion. PRRI\u2019s recent assessment of the religious composition of the country finds that only about 2 percent of the U.S. is Jewish. What\u2019s more, the Jewish population is heavily centered in states that will not determine the outcome of the election: New York, New Jersey, Florida and California.<\/p>\n
PRRI created estimates of the religious composition of each county in the country. In the seven swing states that are likely to determine the outcome of the election, the Jewish population makes up an even smaller percentage of the population, maybe a bit over 1 percent. There are probably fewer Jewish people living in Michigan than the margin of Trump\u2019s loss there in 2020, for example.<\/p>\n
It is the case that counties with a larger percentage of Jewish residents tend to vote more heavily Democratic. The counties with the highest percentages of Jewish residents backed Biden by about 27 points in 2020.<\/p>\n
We should remember, though, that Trump\u2019s view of the overlap between politics and religion is driven less by conservative Jewish allies than White evangelical Protestants. At the Thursday event, Trump touted the extent to which many religious conservatives value Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a lot of good Christians there that love Israel, by the way,\u201d he said. \u201cIn many ways, they love Israel more than Jewish people of Israel, which is shocking, but nevertheless, we\u2019ll take it, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
This is often because conservative Christians view Israel as an essential element in the second coming of Christ. It is not always because of an abundance of sympathy for Jewish people there or in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s political base is far more heavily rooted in the evangelical vote than the Democrats\u2019 are in Jewish voters. In the counties with the highest percentages of evangelical residents, according to PRRI, Trump won in 2020 by 64 points. About a third of all of his votes came from evangelical voters.<\/p>\n
Notice that the vertical axes on those charts differ. Here\u2019s how the densities of Jewish and evangelical residents compares \u2014 or, really, doesn\u2019t compare at all.<\/p>\n
To suggest that any loss will be a function of the 2 percent of Americans who are Jewish \u2014 or the just over 1 percent of swing-state voters who are \u2014 is to present Jewish Americans as wielding disproportionate power over American politics. It suggests that Jewish Americans have some sort of control over systems that is detached from reality.<\/p>\n
It is, in essence, exactly the sort of rhetoric about Jewish people that is at the heart of many antisemitic arguments. The sort of rhetoric echoed by people like Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina. Robinson was revealed earlier Thursday to have literally referred to himself as a \u201cblack Nazi\u201d at one point in the past. This development was not mentioned at the \u201cantisemitism\u201d event, nor has Trump rescinded his fawning endorsement of Robinson\u2019s candidacy.<\/p>\n
To observers who aren\u2019t Donald Trump, it is easy to determine a reason that Jewish Americans might not view him as a robust ally.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buried in his efforts to convince a sympathetic audience that he deserved to return to the White House, Donald Trump made an important admission about a long-standing frustration. \u201cWith all I have done for Israel,\u201d he said at a campaign event ostensibly centered on antisemitism, \u201cI received only 24 percent of the Jewish vote. Now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9867","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\/9867","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=9867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}