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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Hail to the Hairpiece / Late Night Open Thread: Trump Isn’t Necessarily Anti-Semitic — He Just Wants Anti-Semites to Vote for Him

Late Night Open Thread: Trump Isn’t Necessarily Anti-Semitic — He Just Wants Anti-Semites to Vote for Him

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I first put this together Tuesday night. If he weren’t running as a Republican, this would be pretty damning for Trump — A Jewish employee of his Jewish son-in-law’s newspaper writes “An Open Letter to Jared Kushner“:

My name is Dana Schwartz and I’m an entertainment writer at the Observer, the paper owned by your publishing company. On July 2, as I’m sure you’re aware (and have probably been wringing your hands about for the last three days), your father-in-law Donald Trump tweeted out an image of Hillary Clinton in front of raining money with a six-sided star declaring she’s the “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”

I responded to the meme, calling out its blatant anti-Semitic imagery because people can play ignorant, blame the corrupt liberal media for trying to “get” Trump, but it takes only a basic knowledge of world history or an understanding of how symbols work to see a wall of cash, a Star of David, and the accusation of corruption and not see the subtext.

But deny or play dumb as you might, when I tweeted out my response, my worst fears were realized: his message, whether purposeful or inadvertent, was met with cheers by those to whom that star’s message was certainly clear. Mr. Trump’s tweet was seen as a winking promise to this nation’s worst and most hateful individuals…

She’s a trained professional, with access to quality resources, so she could put together a slide show of tweets ranging from ‘You effin yids are so vile and cynical’ to ‘Everyone needs to understand, we’re not gonna allow anyone to keep a pet Jew. Camps or Israel, A or B.’

… Mr. Kushner, I invite you to look through all of those images in the slideshow above, the vast majority sent in your father-in-law’s name. Right now, this hate is directed to one of your employees, but the message applies equally to your wife and daughter.

You went to Harvard, and hold two graduate degrees. Please do not condescend to me and pretend you don’t understand the imagery of a six-sided star when juxtaposed with money and accusations of financial dishonesty. I’m asking you, not as a “gotcha” journalist or as a liberal but as a human being: how do you allow this? Because, Mr. Kushner, you are allowing this. Your father-in-law’s repeated accidental winks to the white supremacist community is perhaps a savvy political strategy if the neo-Nazis are considered a sizable voting block—I confess, I haven’t done my research on that front. But when you stand silent and smiling in the background, his Jewish son-in-law, you’re giving his most hateful supporters tacit approval. Because maybe Donald Trump isn’t anti-Semitic. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think he is. But I know many of his supporters are, and they believe for whatever reason that Trump is the candidate for them…

The worst people in this country saw your father-in-law’s message and took it as they saw fit. And yet Donald Trump in his response chose not to condemn them, the anti-Semites who, by his argument were obviously misinterpreting the image, but the media….

Of course on Wednesday, Jared Kushner, the “Quiet Fixer in Donald Trump’s Campaign,” had his own response, also published in the Observer…

My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.

It’s that simple, really. Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he’s not a racist. Despite the best efforts of his political opponents and a large swath of the media to hold Donald Trump accountable for the utterances of even the most fringe of his supporters—a standard to which no other candidate is ever held—the worst that his detractors can fairly say about him is that he has been careless in retweeting imagery that can be interpreted as offensive…

If even the slightest infraction against what the speech police have deemed correct speech is instantly shouted down with taunts of “racist” then what is left to condemn the actual racists? What do we call the people who won’t hire minorities or beat others up for their religion?…

I tell people that Donald Trump is a Rorschach test. People see in him what they want to see—if they dislike his politics, they might see other things they dislike, such as racism. If they like his politics, they might imagine they’re hearing “dog whistles.” He will touch subjects politicians try to avoid. This is part of why he appeals to so many…

When the tent collapses, the bigots will still be there.

Reader Interactions

31Comments

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    There is no question that the usual suspects, who are convinced we fought on the wrong side in WWII, see this tweet as Teh Donald saying “I am with you against the Eternal Jew.” Kushner can imagine this is not so, but it is. His father-in-law needs to make a choice: renounce all the alt-reich types supporting him, or be justly and correctly labeled an anti-Semite. This is a binary choice. There is no fudge room.

  3. 3.

    hellslittlestangel

    You have to vote for the hateful bigot you have, not the hateful bigot you wish you had.

  7. 7.

    Mary G

    Enjoy your trip on the Nile, Mr. Kushner. The EZ-Bake Oven with the picture of Anne Frank on it was especially yuuge and classy.

  8. 8.

    Calouste

    There’s no bigotry too medieval not to find a home under the Trump tent.

    Are we already onto burning witches and heretics?

  11. 11.

    Damien

    I think that Trump-supporting Jews in this country are comforted by the idea that they aren’t the target this time: it’s Muslims who will feel the brunt of Trump’s fire. Easy to feel secure when it’s the other guys getting burnt.

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    Any preference on France-Germany tomorrow later today? I have been pretty much in the “anybody but Portugal” camp and haven’t given it much thought.

  15. 15.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Hey, a fast moving team is gonna run people over from time to time. Just the collateral damage of politics, so shut up.
    And it’s not like he skirted email rules or something.

    Speaking of which, can you imagine President Trump complying with what must be a meter wide shelf of security rules about how he can communicate?

  23. 23.

    Mai.naem.mobile

    One of Trump’s kids really needs to play the adult here and sit down and have a good talk with him. The guy is having some kind of breakdown. I feel kind of bad for his older grandkids who are probably getting made fun of in school because of their grandad. I just cannot believe this unstable possibly mentally ill/demented old man is probably going to get 40+ percent of the vote.

  24. 24.

    b1narys3rf

    The RJC, Sheldon Adelson and every Republican and Trump supporting Jewish American need to be mercilessly called out on their rank hypocrisy and violation of the values that sane, patriotic members of their community hold dear.

    I know some of these people who would put Party over people and nation and they are really damaged at some levels. Unfortunately nearly all of them are either of the older generations (boomers and above) or Jewish fundamentalists or both. The poison of twisted Likudism (even though Netanyahu himself disavowed Trump) and cable news garbage / email chains of nonsense works wonders on their small minds.

  25. 25.

    Barb2

    @cbear:
    There was a child in the car.

    One more person who should never have been a cop.

    Once again it seems little or no psychological evaluation of this individual before he was hired as an executioner. What traits do these killers have in common?

    Cop pulls car over for broken tail light. Cop demands licence and registration. Driver complies and reaches for said items, get shot. Fucking cop fired a gun into the car with a child in the car. Child witnessed her mother being treated badly.

    The cop’s up the chain of command what the killer cops – these creeps can be selected against.

    Cops then cover up for each other – that’s got to stop. Until then there are no good cops.

    Cops have killed a small town since Michael Brown was executed by a racist cop.

    There was a child in the car and she is one more victim. She has to live with war zone memories.

    Trump wants to protect bad cops. Clinton wants to stop the violence and idiot reporters want to talk about email.

  26. 26.

    Barb2

    Comments broken – at least my post wasn’t about 3 dead dogs killed by a cop. Just another human being.

  27. 27.

    Citizen_X

    What do we call the people who won’t hire minorities or beat others up for their religion?

    Actually, Jared, lately I’ve been calling them Trump supporters.

  28. 28.

    nutella

    So Kushner says he’s the nicest guy ever but fails to address what seems to me to be the fundamental point:

    Trump is republishing anti-semitic white supremacist propaganda. He copied that red star thing and it came from an anti-semitic white supremacist site. This means he is following, approving, and disseminating anti-semitic white supremacist propaganda.

    Anyone who supports him supports publishing anti-semitic white supremacist propaganda.

    The pretense that somebody in the Trump campaign made the red star tweet and innocently put the wrong kind of star in it is deliberate and outrageous deception because the whole thing was copied.

    One of the reactions linked in the OP says “In my opinion, Donald Trump is not a Jew hater. The effort to hold him responsible for what his supporters do is a dangerous trend”.

    This is also deliberate and outrageous bullshit because this complaint on the red star tweet is about something that Trump himself did. He published that tweet himself.

    At least Kushner admitted that the tweet came from the campaign when he “blamed Trump’s campaign staffers for being “careless in choosing an image to retweet.” But he seems perfectly happy that somebody with access to Trump’s account is following, approving, and disseminating anti-semitic white supremacist propaganda and does not even suggest that it might be a good idea to remove that follower of anti-semitic white supremacist propaganda from the campaign.

    Anyone who supports Trump supports publishing anti-semitic white supremacist propaganda.

  29. 29.

    TriassicSands

    I don’t think Trump is anti-Semitic in the traditional sense. Just like he’s not a misogynist or racist in the traditional senses of those words. He simply doesn’t care about other people and will use any words or symbols he wants to use to help bring benefit to himself or to damage another person.

    That’s why Trump hired women for important positions in his businesses. Of course, if one put on a little weight, Trump wouldn’t hesitate to say insensitive and hurtful things to shame the woman. And if a woman challenged him publicly, Trump wouldn’t hesitate to call her “a disgusting animal” or some other grotesquely inappropriate name. Trump’s problem is that he has issues with people in every category of humanity. And if any person crosses Trump in any way, he lashes out using whatever words he thinks will hurt most. For a woman, he uses sexist language; for a minority person he employs racism; and so on.

    Trump is a narcissist to a degree that even most politicians can’t approach. He cares about no one but himself and has no compunction about using what are normally considered grossly inappropriate language and images to either hurt an opponent (or someone who has merely annoyed him) or benefit himself.

    I believe Trump is mentally ill. His narcissism is pathological and it’s hard to believe he isn’t a genuine sociopath.

  30. 30.

    gratuitous

    I don’t use the word quisling very often, but it just seems so very appropriate for Jared Kushner.

  31. 31.

    karen marie

    @TriassicSands: No way anyone can correctly say Trump is not anti-semetic, not just because of “his followers,” not just because he or someone not fired from his campaign follows white supremacists. His long, well-documented history of anti-semetic statements are well known at this point. Just because his favored daughter married “a smart Jew who’s good with money” doesn’t change that. I’m sure Trump is delighted, because he doesn’t have to pay his SIL to mind the store.

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