Trump omits mention of dinner with antisemites in speech to Orthodox Jews

By WorldIsraelNews.com

Donald Trump told a gathering of Orthodox Jews he was “the best ally you’ve ever had,” but stopped short of mentioning his now-infamous dinner at Mar-a-Lago last month with antisemitic rapper Kanye West and Holocaust-denying white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

In his address to the annual President’s Conference of Torah Umesorah at his National Doral club in Miami, the former president underscored his support for Israel on the one hand, and slammed the “almost anti-Israel” Congress.

“Some Democrats in Washington hate Israel with a passion,” Trump averred.

The 2024 presidential hopeful then quoted from his own 2019 State of the Union address in which he stressed the importance of speaking out against antisemitism.

“We must never ignore the vile poison of antisemitism or those who spread its venomous creed,” Trump said, repeating his own remarks from that speech. “With one voice we must confront this hatred; we must confront it everywhere; we must confront it very, very strongly.”

Last week, Trump slammed Jewish leaders for “lacking loyalty” and said they “should be ashamed of themselves,” in response to criticism over the Kanye-Fuentes dinner.

“How quickly Jewish leaders forgot that I was the best, by far, president for Israel,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “They should be ashamed of themselves. This lack of loyalty to their greatest friends and allies is why large numbers in Congress, and so many others, have stopped giving support to Israel.”

Both Republican and Democratic Jews have denounced Trump over the dinner, as have Jewish groups on both sides of the political aisle.

Former U.S. vice president Mike Pence called on Trump to apologize for the dinner, saying he had “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment.”

Trump’s former envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt said the dinner with West and Fuentes “should never have happened” and called on Trump to condemn the two.

Even Morton Klein, head the Zionist Organization of America which recently bestowed Trump with its prestigious Herzl award, castigated the former president.

“Donald Trump is not an antisemite. He loves Israel. He loves Jews. But he mainstreams, he legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters. And this scares me,” he said.

Trump has blasted U.S. Jews before for their perceived lack of loyalty.

In 2019, Trump said that any Jew who votes for Democrat shows “a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

In October, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “No president has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”