Trump says Jewish voters would be partly to blame if he loses the election | US 2024 election news
The Republican candidate again says that Israel would probably cease to exist within two years if the Democrats win.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said American Jewish voters would be partly to blame if he loses the election in November.
The former president lamented that he was behind his Democratic Party rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, among American Jews as he addressed the Israeli-American Council's National Summit in Washington, DC.
“If I don't win this election – and the Jewish people will really have a lot to do with it if that happens because if 40 percent, I mean, 60 percent of the people vote for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist in two years,” Trump said Thursday.
Jews are partly to blame for the outcome of the November 5 presidential election, Trump said, saying they tend to vote for Democrats.
He cited an anonymous poll that he said showed Harris had 60 percent support among American Jews.
The former president has prided himself on his close ties to Israel and the Jewish community, and on his contribution to the relocation of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
At a second event in the US capital focused on denouncing anti-Semitism in the country, Trump said the Democratic Party had a “hold or a curse” on American Jews and that he should get “100 percent” of the Jewish vote because of his policies on Israel.
“My promise to American Jews is this: With your vote, I will be your champion, your protector, and I will be the best friend American Jews have ever had in the White House,” Trump said during the donor event. “But, to be fair, I already am.”
American Jewish voters have leaned heavily Democratic in federal elections for decades and continue to do so. But a small shift in that vote could determine the winner in November.
The Trump campaign has made winning over Jewish voters in key swing states a priority.
In Pennsylvania, for example, there are more than 400,000 Jews, in a state that Joe Biden won by 81,000 votes in 2020.
In a statement before the speech, Harris campaign spokeswoman Morgan Finkelstein criticized Trump for sometimes associating with anti-Semites.
Trump has rejected accusations of anti-Semitism and said he has a Jewish son-in-law.
During his remarks, Trump also did not address a CNN report published earlier in the day about Republican North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who once called himself a “black NAZI” in a post on a pornographic forum.
Robinson has vowed to stay in the race despite the report and the Trump campaign appears to be distancing itself from the candidate while continuing to call the battleground state a vital part of winning back the White House.
