President Donald Trump blurted out another anti-Semitic trope during his brief press availability Tuesday in the Oval Office.
Trump has been having a kind of holy war with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), two of just three Muslim officials in Congress. When speaking to the press Tuesday, he claimed that Jews have no business supporting Democrats because they're anti-Semitic. But then he took it a step further.
"Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat -- I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty," Trump said.
As New York Times writer Max Fisher noted, "accusing Jews of mass national disloyalty for supporting the wrong political party" hasn't worked out well historically.
The trope has been used for centuries as a claim that Jews are more loyal to each other or to some kind of secret, global Jewish agenda. In the late nineteenth century, Jews were accused of having "true loyalty" to political movements like Marxism or Communism, the Anti-Defamation League explained. That has all morphed into unfaltering loyalty to Israel over any other country, including their country of origin or citizenship.
Jewish Americans couldn't believe that Trump would be so willing to blurt out the trope. In the past, Trump's aides have said that he can't possibly be anti-Semitic because his daughter is Jewish.
Jews supported Hillary Clinton with 71 percent of the vote in 2018. Jews then supported Democrats 79 percent in 2018. The overwhelming majority of Jewish elected officials in Congress are Democrats.
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