Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., spoke on the Senate floor this morning and criticized Trump’s comments about Harris and Jewish Americans.
“He knows precisely what he is doing. He is sowing the seeds of division. He is propagating naked antisemitism,” Schumer said. “Donald Trump’s comments were reprehensible, dangerous, and proof that he is disturbingly at ease with antisemitic rhetoric. It might be tempting to listen what Donald Trump said on the radio and tune it out just as another Trump insult, but that would be a mistake.”
Yesterday, Trump participated in an interview with WABC in New York in which he criticized Harris, saying “Number one, she doesn’t like Israel. Number two, she doesn’t like Jewish people. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it.”
In the same interview, Trump also appeared to agree with the host’s remarks that Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, was a “crappy Jew.”
When asked if he meant to agree with the host, Sid Rosenberg, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement, “He obviously wasn’t agreeing with that sentiment. Stop taking talking points and transcripts from the Kamala folks.”
“Kamala has stoked anti-Israel hate on school campuses with her dangerous and divisive rhetoric,” Cheung added in a follow-up statement.
In the last several months, Trump has repeatedly said that Jewish Americans who vote for the Democratic nominee for president must “hate” Israel, invoking a trope that Jews have dual loyalties to America and Israel.
In his floor remarks, Schumer focused on Trump’s repeated remarks, saying, “Calling Jews fools and suggesting they are bad or disloyal because of their political beliefs is not just some juvenile insult, it’s an old anti-semitic trope that goes back centuries, one of dual loyalty. It’s been used for a very long time to drive Jews out of their homes, to paint them as untrustworthy, to deny their basic dignity.”