Donald Trump slammed Jewish leaders for “lacking loyalty” and said they “should be ashamed of themselves,” in response to criticism over his recent dinner with anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.
“How quickly Jewish leaders forgot that I was the best, by far, president for Israel,” Trump said Friday 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.”
The post, which was accompanied by an oped by far-right conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root, came two weeks after Trump dined with the Holocaust-denying, white supremacist Fuentes and West, who has called for the death of the Jewish people.
Both Republican and Democratic Jews have denounced Trump over the dinner, as have Jewish groups on both sides of the political aisle.
Root, an Evangelical Christian who was born Jewish, repeated the same arguments Trump used to defend the Mar-a-Lago dinner, namely that Trump was more supportive of Israel than Democratic Jews, that Kanye West was an old friend who asked for help, and that he was unaware he would be bringing Fuentes and had no idea who he was.
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.”