WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday that American Jewish voters would be partly to blame if he loses the November 5 election to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
During his remarks at the Israeli-American Council National Summit in Washington, the former president lamented that he was behind Harris among American Jews.
Israel would likely cease to exist within two years if Harris won the election, and Jews would be partly to blame for that outcome because they tend to vote Democratic, Trump argued.
“If I don't win this election – and the Jewish people will really have a lot to do with whether that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people vote for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist in two years,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump cited a poll that he said showed Harris had 60% support among American Jews. He also lamented that she had received less than 30% of the vote among American Jews in the 2016 election, which she won, and in the 2020 election, which she lost to Democratic President Joe Biden.
It was unclear which poll the former president was citing, but a recent Pew Research survey found that American Jews favor Harris over Trump, by 65% to 34%.
Trump made similar comments at a separate summit earlier in the evening, also in Washington, that was dedicated to combating anti-Semitism in the United States.
Trump’s campaign has made winning over Jewish voters in key states a priority. American Jews have strongly supported Democrats in federal elections for decades and continue to do so, but a small shift in the Jewish vote could determine the winner in November.
In the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, for example, there are more than 400,000 Jews, in a state that Biden won by 81,000 votes in 2020.
In a statement ahead of the speech, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein criticized Trump for sometimes associating with anti-Semites. Trump has rejected all accusations of anti-Semitism and noted during his speeches on Thursday that he has a Jewish son-in-law.
During his remarks, Trump did not address any issues. CNN The report published earlier in the day about North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson alleged that Robinson had called himself a “black Nazi” in comments posted on a pornography website and that he advocated for the return of slavery.
