How I became a self-hating Jew

Follow this authorDana Milbank's opinions

These have been difficult times for American Jews, facing a wave of antisemitism from the far left because of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. And now, in one of Trump’s first acts since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, he has decided to attack American Jews from the right. Dayenu!

Compounding the insult was where Trump made it: On the podcast of his former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, who went to a Trump inaugural ball wearing the medal of Vitezi Rend, a far-right Hungarian nationalist group with Nazi roots. Gorka said he wore the decoration to honor his late father and isn’t a member of the hateful group; its officials have said otherwise.

“Right,” Gorka said as Trump went on with his rant. “Yeah … yeah.”

Trump disparaged millions of American Jews in the service of propping up his fellow aspiring autocrat Benjamin Netanyahu, the deeply unpopular Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu is clearly prolonging the war in Gaza because when the fighting there ends he will likely be voted out of power and held to account for the government failures that led to Oct. 7.

Because American Jews (like many Israeli Jews) want to end the Netanyahu nightmare, they hate their religion and the Jewish State? The chutzpah.

Now that Trump has locked up the nomination, we’re in for seven months of this ugliness before the election — and potentially four more years of it if that election goes badly. But fear not, dear reader: I will watch Trump so you don’t have to.

In the torrent of crazy and dangerous utterances coming from the man, we tend to bounce from one to the next. I will attempt to pause at week’s end to build a record of his greatest (or, rather, worst) hits so there will be no doubt about what Trump would do if returned to the White House. His apologists once said that Trump should be taken seriously but not literally. From experience, we now know to take him literally: He is going to do, or at least try to do, what he says.

So what did he say over the last week?

He said that certain immigrants are “not people” but are in fact “animals” and “snakes.” He affirmed his view, seemingly lifted from “Mein Kampf,” that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He said his plan for mass deportations, modeled after “Operation Wetback” of the 1950s, “will be very evident” and “will go very quickly.”He saluted those who have been duly convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, who those “patriots” wanted to kill on Jan. 6, called that language “unacceptable” and told CBS News that he “cannot in good conscience” support Trump. In that principled refusal Pence is joined by GOP Sens. Todd Young (Ind.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah).Trump suggested that he would support a nationwide abortion ban. “The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that,” he told WABC radio.Trump said his former adviser Peter Navarro, who reported to prison this week after being convicted of contempt of Congress, was “treated very badly” by the legal system. And he said his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, convicted of bank and tax fraud related to his work for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, is “another person that was treated badly, and he was a patriot.” The Post’s Josh Dawsey reports that Manafort will likely return as a Trump adviser this year.Trump went on a show hosted by the anti-immigrant British politician Nigel Farage, where he threatened to expel the Australian ambassador to the United States and said he might deport Prince Harry. But asked whether Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is a person he could negotiate with, Trump replied: “Yeah, I think he is.”Oh, and he said this at a rally in Ohio: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” He was speaking in the context of automobile imports. But given his history of provoking actual bloodshed, this was small reassurance.

As the general election campaign begins, Trump isn’t doing much campaigning. While President Biden has been barnstorming the country, Trump has visited only one battleground state since Super Tuesday, instead playing golf, making voluntary court appearances and granting interviews to friendly outlets from his Mar-a-Lago residence. This might be because he’s broke.

His campaign is struggling to raise both small- and large-dollar contributions, and donations have been diverted to cover his legal bills. Last Saturday’s rally had been planned for Arizona, but Trump’s campaign moved it to Ohio, where a group affiliated with Senate candidate Bernie Moreno agreed to foot the bill. Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, said this week that he doesn’t have enough cash to post a bond for the $464 million judgment against him for business fraud, after asking about 30 insurance companies to underwrite the bond.

If Trump, for all his self-proclaimed business acumen, isn’t a good risk for 30 different insurers, how could he possibly be a good risk for the country?

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How I became a self-hating Jew

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