Trump has turned Jews into his 'whipping boys' -- and proven the GOP is now a ‘cesspool’: conservative columnist

In an op-ed for The Washington Post this Monday, Jennifer Rubin highlighted President Trump's recent speech before the far-right Israeli American Council, where he unwittingly belted out various antisemitic tropes before the largely Jewish audience.

“You have people — Jewish people — and they are great people and they don’t love Israel enough," Trump said -- a comment that Rubin says uses American Jews "as whipping boys for insufficient loyalty to him and his policies."

Rubin then cited another quote from Trump's speech:

“You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax. Let’s take 100 percent of your wealth away. No, no. Even if you don’t like me — and some of you don’t; some of you, I don’t like at all, actually — and you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes," Trump said, which, according to Rubin, is an age-old antisemitic trope that claims all Jews are rich and only care about money.

According to Rubin, Trump's rhetoric when it comes to US Jews and Israel achieves two aims: to cater to the ears of evangelical Christians and to send a "dog whistle" to the alt-right "who see in Trump confirmation of their negative stereotypes about Jews."

Despite being admonished by various Jewish leaders, Trump "will not stop," Rubin writes.

"He continues to single out Jewish lawmakers (e.g., House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) is “shifty”) and his Republican Party routinely invokes Jewish billionaire George Soros as a maniacal force behind progressive Democrats," writes Rubin, adding that Trump's antisemitism is just another reflection of "today's Republican Party."

"...a cesspool of right-wing nationalist rhetoric, anti-Semitic tropes that find favor in certain circles (since America is a white, Christian nation in their eyes, Jews are “outsiders), as well as anti-immigrant screeds and conspiracy theories."

Read her full piece over at The Washington Post.