Trump says Jewish people should be ‘ashamed’ to vote for Biden
Donald Trump pictured speaking to reporters before walking into court on 9 May
Donald Trump has told Jewish voters they should be “ashamed” to vote for Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election.
The comments came as Mr Trump walked into the Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday morning for another day of his hush money trial. This week, porn star Stormy Daniels is on the witness stand, facing more cross-examination from the defendant’s lawyers.
“What Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful,” Mr Trump said. “If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves. He’s totally abandoned Israel and nobody can believe it.”
Some online have mocked Mr Trump’s words.
“Trump has a curious strategy for appealing to the Jewish voters: he engages in antisemitism,” a Twitter/X user wrote on Thursday morning.
“The only Jews who should be ashamed are the 22 per cent with a favourable view of Donald Trump, who has proven beyond a doubt that he is ‘a bigot, a fraud, a misogynist, [and] a bully’, to quote the chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Norm Coleman,” another user wrote.
Mr Trump’s comments come after President Biden’s administration paused its shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel. However, defence secretary Lloyd Austin said the US commitment to Israel remains “ironclad”.
“We are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of the ongoing events in Rafah,” Mr Austin said earlier this week.
Concerns are growing that Israeli forces will launch a major ground offensive in Rafah, the southern Gaza city in which more than a million people are sheltering from Israel’s attacks.
The Palestinian health ministry says Israel’s continued assault on Gaza has killed almost 35,000 people, most of whom were women and children. The United Nations also says that restrictions on humanitarian aid have created a “man-made famine,” with half the 2.3 million population of the Gaza Strip at catastrophic levels of hunger.
The attacks on Gaza come in the wake of 7 October, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 people hostage.
The Biden administration is also preparing to release a National Security Memorandum, NSM-20, which will reveal the results of an investigation into possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza. It is now expected some time next week, after its initial release date of Wednesday was delayed.
Mr Trump’s views on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza have been inconsistent.
In March, the former president called on Israel to “finish up” the war. He said he had watched images of bombs being dropped on residential buildings in Gaza every night, calling it a “big mistake.” Days later, he called for Israel to “get back to peace and stop killing people”.
Then, in mid-April, Mr Trump was speaking at a Pennyslvania rally when his protesters started chanting, “Genocide Joe”. The nickname for Mr Biden has been widely used by pro-Palestinian advocates to protest against his support for Israel’s war effort in Gaza.
“They’re not wrong,” Mr Trump said of the chanting supporters. “They’re not wrong. He’s done everything wrong.”
However, a spokesperson for Mr Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign clarified his official stance last month.
“As President Trump stated last night in his speech, he believes America must stand with Israel 100 per cent,” Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson for Mr Trump’s campaign, wrote in a statement to The Independent.
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