Former President Donald Trump on Thursday doubled down on attacking Jewish supporters of President Joe Biden, saying that any Jewish Biden voters “should be ashamed.”
“What Biden is doing with respect for Israel is disgraceful,” Trump told reporters as he was heading into the Manhattan courthouse where his criminal hush money case is underway.
“If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed for themselves,” Trump said. “He’s totally abandoned Israel and nobody can believe it. I guess he feels good about it because he did it as a political decision. You have to do the right decision, not the political decision.”
Trump’s comments come in the wake of Biden announcing the U.S. would withhold certain shipments of weapons to Israel should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proceed with a military offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city where more than 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge amid Israel’s war with Hamas. The war has not only decimated Gaza’s infrastructure but left more than 35,000 people dead.
“We’re not walking away from Israel’s security. We’re walking away from Israel’s ability to wage war in those areas,” Biden told CNN, adding that the U.S. would continue to provide defensive weapons to Israel, including for its Iron Dome system.
“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” he said. “But it’s, it’s just wrong. We’re not going to – we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”
Biden’s move has come under fire from conservatives and allies of Israel, such as Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who on Wednesday slammed “Biden’s dithering on Israel weapons” as “bad policy and a terrible message to Israel, our allies, and the world.”
Trump, for his part, has now taken on aggressive messaging that is far more sympathetic to Israel’s efforts than Biden, arguing that Israel has “to clean out the cancer [that is Hamas] and you have to let them do their job.”
Trump’s message—aimed specifically toward Jewish supporters of Biden—is taking heat online.
“counterpoint: I will be voting for the guy who can talk about American Jews without continually busting out the wildly antisemitic dual loyalty trope,” one progressive X user responded.
“The former president needs to stop telling Jews what to do,” wrote someone else.
J Street, a pro-Israel and liberal advocacy organization, posted that “Trump continues to weaponize the Jewish community and our grief as a political wedge – all while peddling antisemitism and dual loyalty himself. It’s despicable and we cannot risk his return to the Oval Office.”
Trump’s comment on Thursday is far from the first time he has singled out American Jews who vote for Democrats.
Even prior to Israel’s war with Hamas, Trump—while he was in the White House—accused Jewish Democrats of being “very disloyal to Israel.”
He has only echoed and amplified that sentiment since Oct. 7, stating in March that any Jewish Democrat “hates their religion” and “everything about Israel” and again in early April that any Jewish Biden voter “does not love Israel” and “should be spoken to.”
Trump’s campaign has defended his past remarks, with a spokesperson telling Reuters that “the Democrat Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist cabal.”
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