Trump’s Suggestion That Jews Could Cost Him Race Creates Fear of Antisemitic Reprisal

Twice on Thursday, the former president said he believed “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with” a loss if Kamala Harris defeated him.

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Former President Donald J. Trump during a campaign event in Washington on Thursday. During his speech at the event, which was billed as about “fighting antisemitism in America,” Mr. Trump suggested that Jewish voters could cost him the presidential race.

Donald Trump’s repeated assertion on Thursday that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with” his loss if Kamala Harris prevailed on Election Day set off a mix of outrage and concern among Jewish leaders on Friday, raising fears that ardent supporters of the former president could be incited against Jews in an era of rising political violence.

“With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 percent of the Jewish vote” in 2020, Mr. Trump said in Washington on Thursday afternoon in a speech to a largely Jewish audience at a campaign event billed as about “fighting antisemitism in America.”

“In my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” he added.

Shortly after, Mr. Trump repeated that argument in a speech at the annual summit of the Israeli American Council, a hawkish pro-Israel and right-leaning group, saying, “If I don’t win this election,” then “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”

Jews make up only about 2.4 percent of the United States population, with the biggest concentrations in New York, Florida and California, which are outside the presidential battlegrounds. In an extremely tight election, they could make a difference in swing states, but the same could be said for many other ethnic, religious and racial groups.

And Mr. Trump’s comments come at a time when many Jews feel squeezed between overt antisemitism on the right and a rising antisemitic strain among pro-Palestinian activists on the left.

“Pre-emptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish-led human rights group, said on Friday in response to Mr. Trump. “It increases their sense of alienation in a moment of vulnerability when right-wing extremists and left-wing anti-Zionists continually demonize and slander Jews. Let’s be clear, this speech likely will spark more hostility and further inflame an already bad situation. ”

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