By Muhammed Enes Calli
ISTANBUL (AA) - Former President Donald Trump said in an event on Thursday that if he loses his bid to return to the White House in this November’s elections, the Jewish people would have played a significant role in this.
Speaking at an event in Washington, DC billed as combating antisemitism, Trump said: "If I don’t win this election – and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40 percent, I mean, 60 percent of the people are voting for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years."
Trump claimed that Jews would bear some responsibility for the outcome of the Nov. 5 presidential election, saying that they tend to vote for Democrats.
He referenced an unnamed poll that he claimed showed his Democratic Party rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, with a 60% approval rating among American Jews.
The former president has often touted his support for Israel, crediting himself with playing a key role in moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem – a move blasted by Palestinians, who cite international law saying that that Israel is illegally occupying East Jerusalem.
But Trump has also come under fire for parroting antisemitic tropes about Jews and Israel. This March, he said in an interview that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and hates “everything about Israel.”
As president, he said if American Jews “vote Democrat, (they) are being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel,” evoking a trope suggesting that Jews have a “dual loyalty” and might be more loyal to Israel than the country they call home.
Trump’s association with antisemites – dining in 2022 with Nick Fuentes, an antisemite and white supremacist, and rapper Kanye West, who threatened to go “death con 3” on Jews – and his defending neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia as “very fine people” have also drawn fire from critics who call the former president racist.