Trump Sees Advantage in Debate over Israel, Anti-Semitism

President Donald Trump can’t get enough of Rep. Ilhan Omar.

As Democratic lawmakers try to turn the page after the liberal legislator’s use of anti-Semitic tropes ignited an embarrassing, intra-party fight, the Republican president is trying to prolong and weaponize the issue for his 2020 campaign, asserting during a private weekend fundraiser that Democrats “hate” Jews.

While Trump publicly muses about winning over Jewish voters for his re-election, his motivations are more complicated and expansive. The president’s rhetorical escalation also is designed to unsettle the Democratic primary debate, exploit an issue that can energize his supporters and move past his own history of toying in anti-Semitic motifs.

Trump on Tuesday promoted comments by former model and 2016 campaign staffer Elizabeth Pipko, who said on Fox & Friends that “Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party.”

Pipko, who serves as spokesperson for the group “Jexodus,” which bills itself as speaking for “Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics,” saw her comments amplified by Trump on Twitter. “There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party,” she continued. “They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.”

Her comments mirrored Trump’s charge on Friday that Democrats had become an “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish” party, responding to the House voted a day before to disapprove of all prejudice in response to Omar’s invocation of “dual-loyalty” charges against American supporters of Israel earlier this month.

Speaking later that evening, Trump went even further in an appearance before Republican National Committee donors, charging that Democrats “hate” Jewish people, according to a person who heard the remarks but spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s comments at a private event.

Omar had sparked a political firestorm that derailed the Democrats’ focus on investigations of the Trump administration, including a public back-and-forth over how, or even if, her party should condemn her comments. The ultimate resolution, which passed the House overwhelmingly, didn’t call out Omar by name.

As a small percentage of the nation, American Jews are not a particularly significant voting bloc, nor is Israel their decisive issue of concern. And both parties acknowledge the controversy is unlikely to alter dramatically the electoral votes of the American Jewish community, which has skewed decisively toward Democrats for more than a generation.

Even a small shift, though, can be significant.

“We’re slicing the salami very thin, and an incremental shift in traditional Democratic blocs to the other side can have a profound impact,” said Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He said his group plans to make “the largest investment that we’ve ever had in the 2020 race in terms of outreach, advocacy and independent expenditures on behalf of the president.”

Stoking the fight also gives Trump an opportunity to deflect criticism of his own rhetoric, invigorate evangelical Christians for whom the Israel issue is a powerful motivator and paint Democrats into a radical corner.

It also plays into Trump’s attempt to cast Democrats as radicals ahead of the 2020 campaign, said conservative commentator Seth Mandel, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine. He noted that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders pushed back against efforts to condemn Omar’s comments. “It makes it very easy to say they’re just adopting whatever the socialist says.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders kept the controversy alive on Monday by criticizing Democrats for failing to explicitly repudiate Omar.

“It’s something that should be called by name,” she said. “It shouldn’t be put in a watered-down resolution.”

Sanders pointed to Republican condemnation of Rep. Steve King earlier this year, including stripping the Iowa Republican of his committee memberships, after he made remarks defending white supremacy. But King had long espoused racially charged ideas, and the GOP only took action after it lost its majority in the chamber.

AP Reports.