FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, September 23
Contact: Logan Smith
[email protected]
202-709-8825
Bend the Arc: Trump’s latest antisemitic and racist comments “part of machinery of fear and division”
WASHINGTON – Bend the Arc: Jewish Action released the following statement on Wednesday in response to President Trump’s latest racist and antisemitic comments:
“President Trump has made clear his contempt for Jewish, Black, and Latinx Americans over and over again – from dog-whistles to blatant bigotry and threats of violence that inspire actual violence,” said Stosh Cotler, CEO of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action. “How many more examples of ‘coincidental’ Nazi imagery and ‘out-of-context’ bigotry do voters and the media need before we acknowledge the obvious fact that Donald Trump sees himself as president of a select few, pushing a white supremacist agenda that puts the rest of us in danger. It’s no wonder most American Jews feel less safe than they were two years ago.”
“Time and time again, Trump and the GOP use antisemitism to push fear and division both in public and in private,” added Cotler. “Their antisemitism is part of the same machinery of fear and division they use to blame Black and brown people, immigrants, Muslim people, and others in order to hold onto power. Trump knows that dividing and scapegoating Americans is the only way his party can maintain their corrupt system of minority rule, and we must join together with our allies to kick Trump and his white nationalist enablers out of power.”
In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials.
After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties, officials said.
Trump’s private musings about Hispanics match the vitriol he has displayed in public, and his antipathy to Africa is so ingrained that when first lady Melania Trump planned a 2018 trip to that continent he railed that he “could never understand why she would want to go there.”
Trump’s latest comments about the ‘dual loyalty’ of American Jews echoes comments he made last week, telling Jewish Americans that Israel is “your country.” That same week, the Trump campaign came under fire for repeated use of antisemitic tropes about Jewish “puppet masters,” after the official Donald J. Trump and “Team Trump” Facebook pages ran ads depicting Joe Biden as a puppet controlled by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish. Earlier this month, the Trump campaign was criticized for using antisemitic dogwhistles to attack Jewish donor Michael Bloomberg.
Bend the Arc: Jewish Action is uniting a movement of tens of thousands of progressive Jews across the country who are fighting for justice and equality for all. We are the only national Jewish organization focused exclusively on social change in the United States.
###
