Article
Key Messages on Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans
July 21, 2024
Donald Trump’s character, values, and priorities render him unfit to hold any office. His Project 2025 agenda is dangerous to the Jewish community and to all Americans. Jewish voters do not have to choose between their support for Israel and combating antisemitism and their concern about other issues such as democracy, abortion, gun safety, and the economy. Trump and JD Vance hold unacceptable positions on all issues of importance to Jewish Americans.
We cannot trust Trump to safeguard Israel’s security. His own former national security advisor said, “Trump’s support for Israel in the first term is not guaranteed in the second term, because Trump’s positions are made on the basis of what’s good for Donald Trump, not on some coherent theory of national security.”
Trump has a long history of antisemitic rhetoric that has intensified in recent weeks as he has become more nervous about losing the election, even going so far as preemptively blaming Jews if he loses in November, endangering our safety and security as no presidential candidate has done in our lifetimes.
Trump’s positions on democracy, abortion, gun control, and the economy are antithetical to Jewish values.
Key Facts:
- Donald Trump has a long history of antisemitic rhetoric. He repeats antisemitic tropes and disparages the vast majority of Jewish Americans, accusing us of hating Israel and our religion because we will not support his extremism. Republicans have echoed Trump’s antisemitism.
- During a private conversation in the White House, Donald Trump said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” building on his pattern of praising fascist regimes.
- On the one-year anniversary of October 7, Trump criticized Jewish Americans and Israelis who do not support him. He said: “Israel has to do one thing. They have to get smart about Trump. Because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody, I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not a reciprocal, as they say.”
- Trump said that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats demonstrate a “total lack of knowledge or disloyalty,” invoking an antisemitic dual loyalty accusation. He repeated this earlier this year when he accused the vast majority of Jewish voters of hating Israel and hating their religion because they vote for Democrats, concluding they should be “ashamed of themselves.”
- Trump repeatedly blamed “the Jewish people” for his potential election loss in November. At an event called “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America,” with unintentional irony, Trump said, “The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” He made similar antisemitic remarks at a second event later that evening. This scapegoating of Jews has led to violence before.
- Trump seeks to demonize the roughly 70% of Jewish Americans who vote Democratic. He has repeatedly said that Jews who vote for the Democratic ticket “should have their head examined” and that Jewish Americans who vote Democratic are “fools.” In April, he said that Jews who vote for President Biden “should be spoken to.” A September poll conducted by GBAO Strategies found that 80% of Jewish voters disagree with his repeated insults targeting millions of Jewish Americans, and 84% of those who disagreed think his insults are antisemitic.
- Trump agreed with an interviewer that Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff is a “crappy Jew” and a “horrible Jew” – an offensive and vile attack.
- During the DNC, Trump called Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro a “highly overrated Jewish Governor.” Shapiro responded by calling out Donald Trump’s continuous peddling of antisemitic tropes.
- Prior to the 2024 campaign, Trump stated that some Jews, namely those who do not support him, “don’t love Israel enough.” He also said that “it used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite.” In the same interview, he said that “the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.”
- Trump said Jewish leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” after many Jews criticized him for dining with antisemitic figures Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. His official campaign statement wrote, “this lack of loyalty to their greatest friends and allies is why large numbers in Congress, and so many others, have stopped giving support to Israel.” On August 6, 2024, when asked about Kanye West – who promised to go “deathcon 3 on Jewish people” – Trump said he had a “good heart.”
- We cannot trust Trump to ensure Israel’s safety and security. Trump mocked Israel and praised terrorists after October 7, called on Israel to “finish up” the war in Gaza without recognizing the hostages, and has said he supports transforming U.S. foreign aid, without exception for Israel, into loans. Trump issued a political rant about the hostages on September 1. His former national security advisor, John Bolton, said, “Trump’s support for Israel in the first term is not guaranteed in the second term, because Trump’s positions are made on the basis of what’s good for Donald Trump, not on some coherent theory of national security.” Trump has threatened multiple times that Israel will cease to exist if he loses, which reveals a deep ignorance of geopolitical reality and is a cynical attempt to frighten Jewish voters. Read more on why we cannot trust Trump on Israel here.
- Trump is weak on Iran. In September, Trump indicated that he would lift sanctions on Iran. The Biden-Harris administration has not lifted any sanctions on Iran and has imposed 700 additional sanctions since Trump left office. Trump walked away from the Iran Deal while the deal was working and Iran was still in compliance. Then his “maximum pressure” strategy failed, his efforts at the UN to continue the arms embargo against Iran failed, and his efforts at the UN to snap back sanctions against Iran failed. Trump’s Iran policy was a disaster. Iran was much closer to nuclear weapons when Trump left office than it was when he took office. Read more here.
- Donald Trump aligns with and emboldens dangerous right-wing extremists. In 2017, Trump equated neo-Nazis with peaceful protestors, proclaiming there were “very fine people on both sides.” In the 2020 presidential debate, he refused to condemn white supremacy and instead incited right-wing extremists, the Proud Boys, to “stand back and stand by,” which they did on January 6. During his presidency, Trump appointed Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and other right-wing extremists to positions of power.
- Trump’s moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel hasn’t won him Jewish support, but it has led to increased antisemitism from Trump. Three years after moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Trump declared he took such action “for the Evangelicals.” At the time, he bemoaned his lack of support among Jewish Americans, struggling to understand why Evangelical Christians would be “more excited by that [embassy move] than Jewish people.”
- Trump’s rhetoric mirrors that of Adolf Hitler. Trump has embraced a campaign of fascist rhetoric unlike any we have seen before in the United States. His campaign posted a video referencing a “unified reich” if he wins the 2024 election. The language he is using in this campaign mirrors the words of Hitler and Mussolini, attacking and dehumanizing immigrants and his political opponents. Trump is a self-proclaimed aspiring “dictator on day one” who has repeatedly assaulted America’s democracy and democratic institutions, including by inciting a deadly insurrection on January 6, for which he was impeached, and committing fraud and attempting to overturn the 2020 election. He praises fascists and dictators like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orban, and he’s acting more and more like them.
- Trump’s positions on other issues of concern to the Jewish community are unacceptable. Trump would institute a national abortion ban. Trump brags that he was able to “kill Roe v. Wade” and said that he would let Republican-controlled states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would outlaw prescriptions for medication abortion being delivered to patients through the mail. Trump is a 34-time convicted felon. Trump threatens our democracy. Trump affirmed that, if reelected, he would deploy the military against civilians for mass deportations and refused to rule out weaponizing the Justice Department to target political opponents.
WATCH AND SHARE: JDCA CEO Halie Soifer breaks down Republicans’ gaslighting of American Jewish voters.
Key Message: “The feeling is mutual,” and Jewish voters will continue to fight for our democracy and freedoms by reelecting Joe Biden and rejecting Trump’s extremism.
WATCH: JDCA PAC’s ad showing how Donald Trump praises dictators and follows their playbook, while he politicizes religion and incites hatred toward Jews.
WATCH: JDCA PAC’s ad, ‘Day One’ highlights Donald Trump’s own words and the threats he poses to our democracy and rights.