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Trump Speaks Out Against Anti-Semitism Trump Calls Anti-Semitism ‘Horrible’ and ‘Painful’
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday said anti-Semitism is “horrible,” and “painful,” speaking out for the first time about a rising tide of incidents and threats targeting Jewish people and institutions since he was inaugurated. WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that anti-Semitism is “horrible” and “painful,” reacting publicly for the first time after drawing criticism for failing to condemn incidents and threats targeting Jewish people and institutions over recent weeks.
During a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Mr. Trump made the comments after drawing criticism in recent days for failing to condemn anti-Jewish threats and actions. During a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Mr. Trump said he had been reminded of the need to combat bigotry and intolerance “in all of its very ugly forms.” He spoke one day after 11 bomb threats were phoned in to Jewish community centers around the country and a Jewish cemetery in University City, Mo., was vandalized.
“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” he said. “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump said his visit was “a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms.” The statement came after weeks in which the leaders of major Jewish organizations complained privately to members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, about the president’s seeming unwillingness to speak out forcefully against anti-Semitic incidents. His failure to do so stoked concern among some Jewish leaders that Mr. Trump, whose presidential campaign drew the support of racist and anti-Semitic groups including the Ku Klux Klan, was at best willing to stay silent about such actions and at worst quietly condoning them.
At a news conference last week, the president had reacted angrily to a question about his response to anti-Semitic threats, calling the query insulting and demanding that the questioner, who works for a Jewish publication, sit down. The comment on Tuesday was a rare concession to the demands of outside forces by a president who prides himself on defying expectations. Despite the questions that arose during his campaign, Mr. Trump has never proactively delivered a statement condemning anti-Semitism.
A White House spokesman said Monday that any such incidents were unacceptable, without specifically mentioning Jews or anti-Semitism. “The president’s sudden acknowledgment of anti-Semitism is a Band-Aid on the cancer of anti-Semitism that has infected his own administration,” said Steven Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. “When President Trump responds to anti-Semitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this president has turned a corner. This is not that moment.”
Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism, wrote in a Twitter post on Monday that “America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC” JCC is the abbreviation for Jewish community centers. The White House was criticized by Jewish groups last month when it issued a statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention the six million Jews who perished, instead including a general mention of “the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror” and “those who died.” Pressed on the matter later, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, defended the statement as “inclusive” of all of those targeted during the Holocaust, including Gypsies, priests and homosexuals, and called criticism of it “pathetic.”
Concern mounted among Jewish leaders after a news conference last week, when Mr. Trump reacted angrily to a question about his response to an increasing incidence of anti-Semitic acts around the nation. The president called the query insulting and demanded that the questioner, who works for a Jewish publication, sit down. The Anti-Defamation League denounced the president’s reaction “mind-boggling.”
Mr. Trump, who was criticized during his presidential campaign for being slow or halfhearted in condemning hate speech, has been particularly stung by accusations that he is anti-Semitic or has nurtured the rise of such sentiment. Such accusations have been leveled against both the president and his chief strategist, Steven K. Bannon, a former head of Breitbart News, a website that has cultivated a white nationalist following.
Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism to marry Mr. Kushner, an observant Jew, wrote in a Twitter post on Monday: “America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC” JCC is the abbreviation for Jewish community centers.
Morton A. Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America and a strong supporter of Mr. Trump, said, “One of the issues here is that President Trump and Steve Bannon are very upset and very frustrated that so many Jewish organizational leaders have accused them of being anti-Semitic, which is very unfair and simply inaccurate.”
He added, though, that “President Trump needed to, himself — not through a statement by his daughter that didn’t even mention anti-Semitism — speak up against this kind of hatred and urge law enforcement to do all they can to find these perpetrators and hold them accountable.”
“I wish he had gone further,” Mr. Klein said of Mr. Trump’s statement. But he added that the president was resistant to accepting counsel about how he should respond to delicate issues.
The proliferation of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and the president’s failure to address them publicly were frequent topics of conversation in Jerusalem over the weekend, where the leaders of American Jewish groups gathered for meetings, according to attendees who described the private discussions on condition of anonymity.
On Tuesday, several organizations issued statements praising Mr. Trump’s comments.
“We appreciate that President Trump spoke directly to this matter,” said Nathan J. Diament, the executive director for public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. “The words of a president of the United States carry great weight, and it is important that Mr. Trump addressed the American Jewish community and all our fellow Americans at this time.”
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks anti-Semitic activities, said Tuesday that the wave of threats was “really worrying,” especially because of the “tendency on the part of this administration to completely overlook terrorism and political violence from the domestic radical right.”
Mr. Potok also welcomed Mr. Trump’s comments but criticized them as tardy.
“It’s very nice that President Trump opposes these crimes,” Mr. Potok said. “It might have been helpful if he had done so months or even years earlier.”
Mr. Spicer complained on Tuesday that it was Mr. Trump who was being treated unfairly, given the criticism that he had been slow to condemn the anti-Semitic acts. “It’s ironic that, no matter how many times he talks about this, that it’s never good enough,” he said.
Mr. Trump has mentioned his Jewish grandchildren and daughter when questioned about his commitment against anti-Semitism. Mr. Kushner has at times privately validated his father-in-law’s complaints, describing the Anti-Defamation League in derogatory terms when the group criticized the Trump campaign’s refusal to disavow bigotry conducted in the real-estate developer’s name.
When Mr. Trump courted the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson early in the campaign, he sent Mr. Adelson a copy of the program from the Algemeiner award dinner where Mr. Trump was honored. Using his customary black Sharpie, Mr. Trump scrawled to Mr. Adelson that he would be the biggest supporter of Israel imaginable.
Yet defenses of Judaism that do not involve fealty to Israel have proved tougher for a man raised in a city heavily populated with Jews, where his views about Jews were never really in question.
In an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN at the end of February 2016, right after Mr. Trump won the South Carolina primary, he demurred when pressed repeatedly about the support offered to him by David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader. “Honestly, I don’t know David Duke,” Mr. Trump said at the time.
Asked by reporters days later why he would not simply disavow Mr. Duke, Mr. Trump shrugged and said, “I disavow, O.K.?” He did not speak Mr. Duke’s name then.