Trump claims Jews are leaving the Democrats, but that might be fake news
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Trump claims Jews are leaving the Democrats, but that might be fake news
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The House hearing was about foreign aid, and almost as soon as it started it took a political turn: The most powerful congressional appropriator was asking one of Washington’s most influential lobbyists about bipartisanship.
“What in your view would be the consequence of making Israel a political football?” Democratic Representative Nita Lowey of New York, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, asked Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s CEO, at a hearing Tuesday of the committee’s Foreign Operations subcommittee.
Kohr, who has led the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for upwards of two decades, leaned into his mic, appearing eager to swing at this softball. US influence in the Middle East depended on Republicans and Democrats working together, he said.
“We will do everything we can [to make sure] that that bipartisanship remains,” Kohr said. “Support for Israel is not a Democratic issue, it’s not a Republican issue and we believe that.”
The meeting soon returned to the expected pleas from the heads of foreign policy and assistance groups (including Kohr and J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami) to maintain and increase foreign aid overall as a means of maintaining American influence abroad at a time when US President Donald Trump seems intent on rolling it back.
Lowey’s pointed question, of course, was not out of the blue: Barely three hours earlier, Trump issued another in increasingly frequent salvos calling on Jews to leave the Democratic Party, their traditional home. He used his Twitter following of mass millions to promote “Jexodus,” a thinly disguised Republican effort to get millennial Jews to bolt the Democratic Party.
The group, whose spokesman is a former Trump campaign aide and model named Elizabeth Pipko, was launched last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference by Jeff Ballabon, a Republican strategist who advised the Trump presidential campaign.
“‘Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party,’” Trump said Tuesday morning on his feed, quoting Pipko, who appeared the same morning on “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News network. “‘We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts [sic] and worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.’ Elizabeth Pipko, Jexodus.”
Trump has made the claim multiple times in recent days, as the Democrats were roiled by comments made by one of their own — Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — that many took as anti-Semitic in effect and possibly by intent. Last Friday, Trump called Democrats an “anti-Jewish” party.
The charge made Democrats furious (which may be Trump’s goal beyond any bid to attract new Jewish voters to Republicans).
“For the president, who when neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in front of a synagogue and said ‘burn it down’ and he said ‘both sides’ are to blame, this is a new divisive low,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York) wrote in a Facebook post, referring to the deadly white nationalist rally in Virginia in the summer of 2017.
Democrats also said it was absurd to claim that Jews were leaving the party — the Jewish Democratic Council of America noted that Jewish votes for Democrats actually increased in the November midterms.
“Republicans have lost support among Jewish voters since President Trump took office,” JDCA said in a statement. “According to exit polling, support for Trump among the Jewish electorate in 2016 was 24 percent, while support for Republicans among Jewish voters in 2018 fell to 17 percent.”
The midterms came, however, before the seemingly unending saga of Ilhan Omar and the accusations that the freshman Minnesota Democrat had used anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Omar’s latest transgression two weeks ago was to say she felt pressured into pledging “allegiance” to Israel; Jews in the Democratic House charged that she was invoking an anti-Semitic slander of dual loyalty. That led to a resolution last week passed by the House that condemned anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate.
The resolution singled out insinuations of dual loyalty for special opprobrium, but Republicans said it did not go far enough and failed to name Omar.
Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in an interview that the Omar controversy would help him make a case that he has pressed for a decade: Democrats are not doing enough to combat anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activity within their ranks.
“There is a virulent strain with the Democratic Party that’s on the rise in terms of anti-Semitic and Israel bias,” said Brooks, adding that the RJC is planning a massive get-out-the-vote drive among Jews ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Pipko said in her Fox interview that Jexodus also would work Jewish communities ahead of the presidential election, particularly in swing states where the Jewish vote can still make a difference. Trump’s tweet about Jexodus was a PR coup for the group; the 23-year-old Pipko is the only name that appears on its website.
In a news release announcing its launch, Jexodus wrote, “We are proud Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics. We reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left. Progressives, Democrats, and far too many old-school Jewish organizations take our support for granted. After all, we’re Jewish, and Jews vote for Democrats.”
Brooks’ counterpart at JDCA, Halie Soifer, ridiculed the notion that Jews were up for grabs.
“The Democratic Party has always been the home of the Jewish electorate and President Trump’s presidency has only reinforced that,” she said in an interview.
Soifer cited Trump’s policies restricting immigration, cutting back on subsidies for the social safety net and statements widely seen in the liberal and centrist Jewish community as bigoted.
“As President Trump has implemented policies antithetical to Jewish values, Jews have rejected it in record numbers,” she said.
Notably, in exit polling last November, 72 percent of Jewish respondents said they blamed Trump’s nativist rhetoric in part for fueling the massacre of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue days before the election. The shooter had complained that a Jewish group, HIAS, was behind a migrant caravan that Trump said was mounting an “invasion” of the United States.
Trump’s goading of the Democrats comes just two weeks before the annual AIPAC policy conference. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak at the conference and also meet with Trump. The Israeli leader has stridently defended Trump against charges that he encourages anti-Semitism.
A partisan free-for-all is the last thing AIPAC and mainstream Jewish groups want. The lobby has already made much of the high-level speakers it is attracting from both parties, including the House Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California.
Logan Bayorff, a spokesman for J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy lobby with a political action committee that has backed only Democrats, said Trump should not rely too heavily on Netanyahu to garner Jewish support. Netanyahu, she said, has alienated American Jews with his own sharp rightward turn in recent years.
“As Netanyahu in his own scramble to ensure his own political survival is digging deeper into racist attacks on Arab Israelis, you’re going to see more and more American Jews pushed toward the camp where J Street is,” Bayroff told JTA.
Over the weekend, Netanyahu clashed publicly with a TV personality who insisted that Israel is a “country of all its citizens.” When Netanyahu responded that Israel is “not a country of all its citizens” but rather “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” critics took it as an attack on the country’s Arab minority.
It did not seem as if even Pipko of Jexodus was entirely convinced of her mission. Asked by her Fox interlocutors about whether she had persuaded her Jewish friends to come aboard, she said: “I don’t think they’re going to change.”
Tags
Who is online
92 visitors
By the way, John I note that you included the captions for all the photos in the article EXCEPT FOR THE TOP ONE, and misleading on your part to omit the caption for that one, most likely because it indicated it was from 2016 and might not support your theory about Jews not supporting Trump now. LOL Very clever, John. Unfortunately JTA did not open the whole article for me so I couldn't see what else you may have omitted that would not support your theory.
Sorry Buzz. When I first started posting the article, the photo at the top wasnt showing up, so I had to add that one separately. I didnt pay any attention to any of the captions.
There was no 'conspiracy', lol.
I see no purpose in crowing about pre-midterm statistics. As I've said elsewhere, it's all speculation until the results of the next election are known. There's still a lot of water yet to flow under the bridge, and only The Shadow knows what lurks in the hearts of men.
True, however, (forgive me for saying it) I believe that American Jews will continue to vote as traditional liberals. It won't matter what the anti-Semitic progressives say about Jews or how anti-Israel the dems platform may be, American Jews will keep right on voting the way they always have. I hate having to say that.
Granted that American (and Canadian) Jews have a liberal bias, but depending on how bad, how antisemitic, how anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, pro BDS the Democratic Platform and the principles of the majority and leaders of its lawmakers get, I would certainly lose respect for American Jews generally if they did not take note of what could be to their detriment. I reiterate what I said - lots of more water yet to flow under the bridge, so the next election will provide the answer. Predictions are useless, and as I said about that, only The Shadow knows. I would not rely on polls that are bound to be manipulated in some way or other.
Jews do not vote with as 'traditional liberals." Jews, as a rule, do not vote stupidly against their own beliefs or interests.
I'm not Jewish and I won't try to speak for how Jewish people vote, but like most sensible people they don't seem to like Trump very much.
Buzz seems determined to convince the world that Jews will reject the Democratic party.
I think he should worry more about all Netanyahu's corruption and racism catching up with him.
The other day you said that if Jews voted for Democrats they would be placing themselves in a danger similar to what happened to them in Nazi Germany. I didnt go back later and check the seed. Did you ever apologize for that?
Yes, in fact I did. You were right to be critical. I was extremely angry when I said that and when I cooled down and listened to others' advice I amended that statement, restricting it to those who are anti-Israel, like J-Street and BDS supporters.
Nor Romney, nor McCain, nor Bush, nor Reagan.......It's not hard to see the trend.
Buzz seems determined to convince the world that Jews will reject the Democratic party.
Nope, Buzz is clearly asking a question. A question of how much people will endure before they realize they are being betrayed.
I think he should worry more about all Netanyahu's corruption and racism catching up with him.
This has nothing to do with Netanyahu nor the hate filled Palestinians
No one is being "betrayed". Some Democrats criticize some aspects of Israeli policy. So do some Jews.
I highly doubt there is any more true anti-semitism among Democrats than there is among everyone. (Any is too much).
I read an article in an Israeli newspaper yesterday. It said American Jews vote Democratic because the Democratic Party more represents their values. Omar's words are not going to change that.
If I was a Jewish American voter who voted for Obama or any House democrat who has not spoken out against Omar's anti-Semitism, I'd feel betrayed!
I highly doubt there is any more true anti-semitism among Democrats than there is among everyone.
I beg to disagree.
I read an article in an Israeli newspaper yesterday. It said American Jews vote Democratic because the Democratic Party more represents their values.
I firmly believe that and I didn't need to read something yesterday.
Omar's words are not going to change that.
Sadly, I believe that too
"Trump Claims." The Trump claims a lot of things. "I've got the biggest brain," is a true Trumpian classic. Almost but not quite as stupendous as his, "I'm like a really smart guy." Sheesh, send him back to Trump Tower---give him something to do---like hire more lawyers or something.
What ever. The Trumpian throngs never miss an opportunity to 'campaign slogan' something and for the moment the Jews are that something.
Tomorrow is another day. Another Trumpian claim and the beat just goes on and on and on.
"Water flow under the bridge?" Yeah. There's that too. L O effen L.
In the meantime we will have full employment, an expanding economy, judges that follow the Constitution and a strong military. All despite whatever character flaws upset the radical left.