Donald Trump’s repeated assertion 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 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% of the Jewish vote” in 2020, 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.

Trump Repeats Argument

Shortly after, 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% of the U.S. 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 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.

“Preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish-led human rights group, said Friday in response to 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. ”

Noting that Trump had made his remarks at an event billed as combating antisemitism, Greenblatt added: “Calling out hate is important, but I can’t overstate how the message is diluted and damaged when you employ hate to make your point.”

Trump Remains Supported by Right-Leaning Jews

Trump’s institutional support among right-leaning Jews has remained solid. Matthew Brooks, the longtime head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, staunchly defended the former president’s comments, calling them “Trump being Trump.”

Brooks said his organization had been saying all year that in an extremely tight election, Jewish votes for Trump in swing states could secure victory. All Trump was doing was stating the converse, he argued: that Jewish voters could cost him the election.

“At the end of the day, you can’t look at Donald Trump and believe he endorses or supports any antisemitism,” Brooks said.

But Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which leans conservative, said he was troubled by Trump’s remarks, which he was present for.

On the one hand, Diament said, Trump had been recounting how his support among Jewish voters had grown from 2016 to 2020 as he consistently demonstrated his support for Israel’s government. And he said that Trump’s assertion that Jewish voters could make a difference in 2024 was accurate.

“As an analytical point, some portion of the Jewish vote is a swing vote and can be impactful,” Diament said.

But he said he was nonetheless disturbed by Trump’s remarks.

“It is concerning for him or any candidate to say, ‘If I lose, it’s because of a specific group,’” Diament said. “That is the kind of accusation that can be misused and abused by people who are enemies of the Jewish people.”

Jewish votes might be comparatively few, but among Jews, the 2024 election has been fraught. Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the retaliatory war in the Gaza Strip have raised tensions between the traditionally pro-Israel center of the Democratic Party and an increasingly vocal left that wants the party to break with the Jewish state.

Republicans Exploit the Divide

Republicans, led by Trump, have tried to exploit that divide to woo Jewish voters and their campaign donations.

But the Republican Party also has the support of open antisemites, a point that was back in the news Thursday when CNN reported that the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina, who is running to be the state’s governor, had once called himself a “black NAZI!”

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, was the biggest backer of the Republican Jewish Coalition as well as a founder of the Israeli American Council and a key Trump ally. Trump has sought support from his widow, Miriam Adelson, who after sitting out the 2024 Republican primary has returned to Trump’s fold.

After Hamas’ attack on Israel, the coalition offered President Joe Biden high praise for what Brooks called his “tremendous” and “unwavering support” of Israel.

Now, however, the coalition is all in on Trump’s election.

“When he says Jews need to have their head examined, he’s absolutely right,” Brooks said of Trump’s repeated assertion that the Jewish tilt toward Democrats is illogical given Republicans’ support for Israel and the rise of antisemitism in the pro-Palestinian left.

Harris’ campaign pushed back hard on any defense of Trump’s words. Morgan Finkelstein, a campaign spokesperson, accused the former president of “resorting to the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book.”

“When Donald Trump loses this election,” she said, “it will be because Americans from all faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds came together to turn the page on the divisiveness he demonstrates every day.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jonathan Weisman/Kent Nishimura
c. 2024 The New York Times Company