Donald Trump is peaking early, but unlike the cherry blossoms in Washington D.C., it’s not a pretty thing to behold.
As reported by Chris Cameron for the New York Times:
Former President Donald J. Trump accused Jews who vote for Democrats of hating their religion and Israel, reviving and escalating a claim he made as president that Jewish Democrats were disloyal.
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Mr. Trump made his remarks in an interview published online on Monday with Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide for Mr. Trump who now hosts a conservative talk radio program. Mr. Gorka asked Mr. Trump about criticism that prominent Democrats — including President Biden and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader — had levied against Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing prime minister of Israel.
“I actually think they hate Israel,” Mr. Trump replied. Mr. Gorka agreed.
“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Mr. Trump added later. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”
It’s hard — no, let’s be honest, it’s impossible — to conceive how someone who expresses these ugly sentiments could even be in the running for a position of high office in this country. How this type of thinking could be interjected into the public realm, especially in such a fraught time, simply boggles the mind: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.”
This is the talk of someone completely unmoored to any semblance of human empathy. Sociopathic doesn’t even capture it. It’s the talk of someone who’s fundamentally, hopelessly and irredeemably dead inside. Oh, and Mr. Gorka, the person he was talking to? The person interviewing him? Well, judge for yourself.
Evidently there’s an audience for this kind of speech. Evidently there’s someone out there nodding in agreement. It’s hard to envision what such a person would look like, but if you squint real hard, you might be able to imagine them.
Trump went from “bloodbath” to “Jews” in the space of about 48 hours. It’s not clear what’s next.
As Cameron reports:
“Another day, another depraved antisemitic screed from Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vilified the overwhelmingly majority of American Jews,” Halie Soifer, the chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said on social media. (Jews are considered to be one of the most consistently liberal and Democratic demographics in America.)
What is clear though, is that this is a person cannot (and will not) control what comes out of his mouth. Even if he wanted to, which he obviously doesn’t.
That’s why he’ll lose.