WASHINGTON, Sept 20 (Askume) – Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said on Thursday that Jewish American voters would bear some responsibility.
Speaking at the Israel-U.S. Council National Summit in Washington, the former president lamented that he lags behind Harris among American Jews.
Trump argued that if Harris wins the election, Israel could cease to exist within two years and that Jews are partly responsible for that outcome because they vote for Democrats.
“If I don’t win this election — if I do win, the Jewish people are going to be really, really affected because if 40 percent, I mean, 60 percent of them are voting,” Trump told the crowd, “Israel will cease to exist in two years.”
Trump cited a poll that showed Harris received 60% of the vote among American Jews. He also lamented that he received less than 30% of the American Jewish vote in the 2016 election and lost the 2020 election to Democratic President Joe Biden.
It’s unclear which survey the former president was referring to, but a recent Pew Research Center poll found that American Jews prefer Harris to Trump by 65% to 34%.
Trump made similar comments earlier in the evening at another summit in Washington dedicated to combating anti-Semitism in the United States.
The Trump campaign has made it a top priority to win over Jewish voters in key battleground states. American Jews have leaned heavily Democratic in federal elections for decades and will continue to do so, but small shifts in the Jewish vote could determine the winner in November.
For example, there are more than 400,000 Jews in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, which Biden won by 81,000 votes in 2020.
In a statement before the speech, Harris campaign spokesman Morgan Finkelstein criticized Trump for sometimes associating with anti-Semites. Trump has denied all charges of anti-Semitism and said in a speech on Thursday that he has a Jewish son-in-law.
While making his remarks, Trump did not comment on a CNN report published earlier in the day about North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. The report said Robinson once called himself a “black Nazi” in comments posted on a porn site and that Syed advocated for the restoration of slavery.
