Former US President Donald Trump refrained from addressing a widely criticized private meal he shared last month with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and a rapper who spewed anti-Semitic conspiracies, as he was speaking Friday at a conference of Orthodox Jews.
The former US president told the audience he was “the best ally you ever had,” in his first speech to a Jewish crowd since dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Trump has repeatedly praised the Jewish people and stressed his support for Israel during his address to the annual presidential Torah Umesorah conference at his National Doral club in Miami. He alleged that the congressional Democrat was now “almost anti-Israel” and claimed that some in Washington “hate Israel with a passion.”
Trump is struggling for political momentum a month after becoming the first candidate to formally enter the 2024 presidential contest. He hoped the early announcement might scare off potential challengers, but a series of political setbacks have instead left him deeply vulnerable so that he is launching his third presidential campaign.
The 76-year-old Republican faced sharp criticism from his own party in late November after having dinner with Holocaust-denying white supremacist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye. Shortly after the meeting, West said, “I love Jews, but I also love Nazis.
Former US Vice President Mike Pence called on Trump to apologize for the meeting, saying he had “exercised profoundly poor judgment”.
Trump said at the time that he did not know who Fuentes was, but did not report him.
On Friday, Trump completely ignored the episode, while quoting an excerpt from his 2019 State of the Union address in which he stressed the importance of speaking out against anti-Semitism.
“We must never ignore the vile poison of anti-Semitism or those who spread its venomous credo,” Trump said, reading from his own past remarks. “With one voice, we must confront this hatred; we have to face it everywhere; we have to face it very, very strongly.
The 28-minute speech largely consisted of Trump reading a article by a right-wing Jewish supporter who listed the pro-Israel steps the “philosemite” former president took during his tenure.
File: US President Donald Trump meets with rapper Kanye West, right, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 11, 2018. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
The Orthodox crowd repeatedly cut it to applause, with the loudest cheers coming after Trump recalled his decision to commute the sentence of Sholom Rubashkin, a kosher meat executive convicted of dozens of counts bank fraud.
His 27-year sentence was much longer than others convicted of similar crimes, and there has been at least one instance of prosecutors in the case making Jewishness an issue, calling him a flight risk to Israel though. that there is no indication that Rubashkin intended to flee there. .
“That’s got a bigger hand, think of it, that’s got a bigger hand than Jerusalem?” Trump said, referring to his 2017 decision to move the US embassy.
“It’s bigger than Sholom, I love Sholom, but it’s bigger than Sholom, for me that’s the most important thing,” he later said of the deal exit. with Iran, which traded sanctions relief against Iran canceling some of its nuclear activity.
Illustrative: Defense attorney Montgomery Brown, right, and Sholom Rubashkin speak during the trial of Rubashkin, charged with state child labor, May 14, 2010, at the Black County Courthouse Hawk in Waterloo, Iowa. (Andrea Melendez/AP, Billiards)
Trump reiterated his dismay at the roughly three-quarters of American Jews who support the Democrats, despite what he considers to be all the positive steps he has taken for Israel.
How do you do this? How do you do this when they really induce a possible destruction of Israel? he said.
Trump regularly refers to Israel as “your country” in speeches to American Jewish audiences and says he deserves more support from the community.
He concluded his speech with a “bit of advice” to those in the room, which was largely the same as a social media post last week in which he castigated “Jewish leaders” for their “lack of of loyalty” after facing a flood of condemnations for having dinner with West and Fuentes.
“You must treat your friends with dignity and you must be loyal to those friends. Because [others in Washington] are no longer there for Israel as they were before,” Trump said. “There is a group that is very opposed to Israel and frankly to the Jewish people. And you just can’t let that happen.
“So when you have an ally, and I believe I’m the best ally you’ve ever had…” he continued before being swamped with applause, at which point he decided to wrap up his speech.
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