Donald Trump has spent the last 24 hours trying to claim that Kamala Harris has insulted Jewish people by picking Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Which is an incredibly rich argument given that Trump himself has a long history of engaging in all manner of antisemitism and has literally—literally!—been called “America’s Hitler” by his number two.
In an interview with Fox & Friends, the ex-president claimed that Harris’s decision to make Walz her VP instead of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro was “very insulting to Jewish people,” baselessly asserting that Harris did not go with Shapiro “because of the fact that he’s Jewish.” (Trump has previously claimed that Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, “doesn’t like Jewish people”).
Then he suggested that any Jewish person who doesn’t vote for him has mental problems—which he has said many times before. “I think that any Jewish person who votes for a Democrat—or, in this case, [for] these people…should have their head examined. They are so bad to Jewish people, what they’ve done and the way they talk and their policy and everything else,” he said, adding that he had “very little doubt” that Harris didn’t pick Shapiro because he’s Jewish.
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Claiming that not picking a Jewish VP is somehow an insult to Jewish people is an interesting one, given that Trump himself did not select a Jewish running mate any of the three times he ran for president, nor did he appear to even consider a Jewish person.* But more importantly, the notion that Jewish people who don’t vote for him are somehow voting against their self-interests is a bold one to make, given that Trump:
- Allegedly said Adolph Hitler “did some good things,” and had to be told by his then chief of staff, “Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy”
- Claimed that a group of neo-Nazis had some “very fine people” among it
- Had dinner at Mar-a-Lago with a Holocaust denier
- Has said a man known for going on antisemitic tirades had “a good heart”
- Hosted a White House Hanukkah party that featured an evangelical pastor who once said Jews were going to hell
- Attacked “liberal Jews” on Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days of the year
- Told a room full of Jewish people that Jews who work in real estate are “brutal killers” and “not nice people at all”
- Suggested Jews control the media
- Reportedly said that Jews are “only in it for themselves” following phone calls with Jewish lawmakers
- Said Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and Judaism
- Reportedly wanted his military leaders to operate like “the German generals in World War II”
- Has used Hitlerian rhetoric, like calling his enemies “vermin” and claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”
- Tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton’s face against a backdrop of $100 bills and a Star of David, along with the words “most corrupt candidate ever”
- Closed his 2016 campaign with an ad that included the images of three Jewish people—George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Lloyd Blankfein—with the warning that a secretive “global power structure” was to blame for economic policies that have “robbed our working class“ and “stripped our country of its wealth”
- Suggested that Jews only care about money
- Kept a book of Hitler’s speeches next to his bed
Meanwhile, JD Vance, Trump’s own running mate, once called him “America’s Hitler.”
Incidentally, Shapiro himself praised Harris yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania, urging voters to cast their ballots for the Harris-Walz ticket. “We are not going back…not only are we not going back, we are not going into the future with Donald Trump,” he said.
*Though he did reportedly consider Congresswoman Jewish Space Lasers.
Before Walz became his competition, Trump was full of praise for the guy
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