President Trump on Wednesday doubled down on his claim that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats were “disloyal” — and clarified that he was referring to a lack of loyalty to Israel, a key US ally but also a foreign government.
“I think that if you vote for a Democrat you are very, very disloyal to Israel and to the Jewish people,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a speech to a veterans’ group in Kentucky.
Trump sparked outrage Tuesday from Democratic presidential candidates and American Jewish groups after accusing American Jews who vote for Democrats of “great disloyalty.”
Critics, including Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke and others, said Trump’s comments echoed an anti-Semitic slur accusing American Jews of dual loyalties to the US and Israel.
The commander in chief initially responded on Twitter earlier Wednesday by quoting a conservative columnist as saying American Jews “don’t know what they’re doing.”
The president thanked the commentator, the birther conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root, who likened Trump to the “king of Israel” and said Israelis “love him like he is the second coming of God.”
The comments followed Trump’s attacks on Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who were denied entry to Israel last week after Trump tweeted that they should be banned.
Tlaib and Omar are supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to punish Israel economically for its treatment of Palestinians.
“Where has the Democratic Party gone? Where have they gone where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” Trump said on Tuesday, accusing the pair along with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of new York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts of hating Jews and Israel.