By: Glenn Carracos
Orthodox Jews in America want to help Donald Trump make America great again – and are putting their money where they mouths are.
A fundraising banquet last week reportedly collected a whopping $4 million for the president’s re-election campaign.
“[He’s] the first Hasidic president,” Yossi Garelik, an Orthodox rabbi in Crown Heights who voted against Trump in 2016, told the New York Post in an interview. “Literally right before he went into office when Obama abstained at the U.N. in December 2016 [jeopardizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank], Trump said, ‘January 20th everything will change.’ I said,’ This guy means business.’ I completely converted.”
According to Post reporters Doree Lewak and Jon Levine (https://nypost.com/2019/11/23/orthodox-jews-opening-up-their-wallets-for-trump-in-2020/), “He is not alone. In 2018, 91% of Orthodox Jews rated President Trump’s job performance as “satisfactory” or “very satisfactory” — with 82% saying they would support him again in 2020, Ami Magazine, a Jewish weekly, reported. This is in opposition to less-religious Jews, 71% of whom voted for Hillary Clinton, according to the Pew Research Center. And the Orthodox are not just opening their hearts to the Republican president, they’re opening their wallets.”
Indeed, it is hard to understand why Jews of any stripe would not throw their support behind Trump. The president recently told reporters that he did not blame Israel for initially not allowing Tlaib and Omar to visit the country. They both “hate Israel and hate Jewish people” and were only interested in going on a “propaganda tour against Israel,” he said.
“The president also rejected the notion of cutting off aid to Israel, and said he couldn’t “believe that we’re having this conversation,” the Daily Beast reported. “He continued: “Where has the Democratic party gone? Where have they gone, where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel?” Trump asked reporters. “And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
If Jews needed any additional motivation to contribute to Trump’s campaign, there is always the impeachment effort. President Trump’s reelection campaign “announced that on Wednesday it raised over $3.1 million in donations – the same day as the first public hearing of the House’s impeachment inquiry into Trump,” reported Fox News. “$3,144,257 RAISED YESTERDAY!” Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, tweeted Thursday. “’[Trump] loves these huge numbers. He knows that it isn’t enough to end this IMPEACHMENT SCAM.”
