Former President Donald Trump speaks during the Pray Vote Stand Summit, Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, in Washington. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File
On the final day of the Jewish New Year celebration, former president Donald Trump shared a flier on social media accusing “liberal Jews” who didn’t support him of having voted “to destroy America & Israel.”
In a post Sunday on Truth Social, his social media platform, the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner added a flier created by the organization JEXIT – a group that seeks to draw Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party. Text featured in the flier appears on the group’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
“Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward!” the flier reads. “Happy New Year!”
Trump’s post amid the celebration of Rosh Hashanah drew strong rebuke, with Amy Spitalnick, chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, calling it “antisemitic.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said it is “dangerous and wrong to suggest an entire segment of the Jewish population voted to destroy America and Israel.”
“Whether or not it’s intentional, President Trump is playing into conspiracy theories about dual loyalty here,” Greenblatt said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Even worse, this is happening on one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah.”
Jewish people have historically voted for Democrats in far greater numbers than for Republicans, and Trump has a lengthy history of attacking Jewish voters who don’t support him.
In March 2019, for instance, ahead of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said Democrats are “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish.”
Months later, in August 2019, he said any Jewish people who vote for Democrats are showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” prompting an outcry from critics who said the president’s remarks were promoting antisemitic stereotypes.
In October last year, Trump once again attacked American Jews as not supporting him enough. Leaning on the antisemitic trope that U.S. Jews hold secret loyalty to Israel rather than the United States, Trump suggested they should show more appreciation to Israel and to him, since he believed “no president” had done more for Israel than he had.
The former president has long expressed frustration that support for him among U.S. Jews hasn’t grown, particularly since as president he moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The flier Trump shared on Truth Social on Sunday listed the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and the 2019 U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the disputed territory of the Golan Heights as proof that the former president is not an antisemite.
Greenblatt, of the ADL, noted that, even though his organization “supported many of these policy decisions, the ADL doesn’t believe that our community needs to be lectured about how to vote.”
Michelle Terris, founder of JEXIT, said Trump posted the flier after having dinner over the weekend with JEXIT board member Siggy Flicker, a former cast member of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.”
“We believe he shared it on Truth Social because he is so proud of his record of support for the Jewish community in America and for the State of Israel,” Terris said.
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