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Sentinel: Jewish Democrats label Donald Trump ‘the biggest threat to the security of American Jews today’

November 20, 2019

By Anthony Man

A national Democratic organization is launching a multi-pronged effort to convince Jewish voters in Florida and other key states that President Donald Trump is a serious threat to American Jews, a critical voting bloc in the 2020 election.

The effort was launched Wednesday with a video that culminates with the assertion that Trump bears responsibility for a rise in violent anti-Semitism in the U.S. — and that “the biggest threat to the security of American Jews today is, incredibly, the president of the United States.”

The new video, from the Jewish Democratic Council of America, is arresting. It begins with news video of white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and then shows video of the news conference at which Trump declared there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Mixed in with dramatic music and a narrator speaking in a somber tone, the ad accused Trump of emboldening “the far right by speaking of immigrant invaders and infestation,” and showing that similar language was used by the white nationalist who carried out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were killed and six wounded.

That’s followed by Trump’s assertion that any Jewish people who vote for Democrats show “a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

Ron Klein, a former Democratic member of Congress from Broward and Palm Beach counties, is chairman of organization that produced the new ad. He said it would be placed on social media sites. He declined to say how much the Jewish Democratic Council was spending on the effort.

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, called the Democrats’ video “absurd.”

“The most pro-Israel president in 50 years, with Jewish grandkids, who has made us more secure and prosperous is only a threat to Democrats who want to pursue a pro-Palestinian agenda,” Brooks said by email.