Then there was an initial, strange silence from Trump and his aides about a rash of anti-Semitic vandalism and bomb threats around the country in January and February.
In May, in Israel, Trump insisted on a much shorter stop at Yad Vashem, an important Holocaust memorial and museum, than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush had made, and he stuck to that plan even as many Israelis and American Jews cried foul. The tone-deaf breeziness of his approach was accentuated by the message he left in the visitors book: It is a great honor to be here with all of my friends so amazing & will never forget! As Yair Rosenberg of the Jewish magazine Tablet tweeted, it was basically just what teenagers write in each others high school yearbooks.
Ivanka Trump went to the Warsaw memorial in her fathers stead, though Trump softened that blow somewhat by mentioning, in his big Warsaw speech, that the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Polands Jewish citizens.
Ivanka converted to Judaism to marry Jared Kushner, and the couples key roles in the White House mean that Trump has observant Jews at the very core of his presidency and of his life.
But that didnt stop him from making remarks to Jewish Republican donors in December 2015 that seemed to play into an anti-Semitic stereotype. Im a negotiator like you folks, he said, later adding: Is there anybody that doesnt renegotiate deals in this room? Perhaps more than any room Ive ever spoken to.
During his presidential campaign, he embraced the favor of groups and people who trafficked in white supremacy. He re-tweeted material from proudly anti-Semitic Twitter feeds, and prompted a furor by promoting an image that placed Hillary Clintons face atop a pile of cash and beside a six-pointed star on which most corrupt candidate ever was written.
The website PolitiFact concluded that it was unlikely that the Trump campaign intended to put out a Star of David image. In fact, the campaign moved to replace the star with a circle when the image gained attention. Even so, PolitiFact noted, Trump had an unusual habit of using social media to broadcast material that comes from sources with a history of spreading racism, anti-Semitism or white supremacy.
Im not convinced that Trump is much of an anti-Semite, any more than Im convinced that hes much of a homophobe. (Racism and sexism are another matter.) But I think hes so thirsty for, and intoxicated by, whatever love comes his way that hes loath to rebuff the sources of it.
A prominent Jewish Republican put it well. I think Trump is such a pathological narcissist that the act of telling people who love you that you reject them he cant get around that, he told me, interpreting Trumps reasoning this way: What can be wrong with them? Theyre for me!
Trump is disinclined to denounce any constituency or tactics that elevate him to the throne, where hes sure that he belongs. The outcome validates even the ugliest and most divisive ascent.
I dont think hes goading these people or associating with them because he shares their views, the Republican added. I do think that hes so insensitive about the presidency about the responsibilities of the leader of the free world that he doesnt realize its not enough to say, once or twice, I dont agree with them. He doesnt realize that you have to be very clear. And he doesnt realize or care that hes validating and encouraging them.
He doesnt understand the message of zipping through Yad Vashem when predecessors lingered, because hes less concerned with the weight of his office than with the whims and convenience of Donald Trump. Its all about him, always and if hes sure in his own heart that hes good with Jews, then he shouldnt have to prove it.
Go back to his mini-tantrum during a White House news conference in February, when a reporter for a Jewish magazine tried to ask him whether he was paying proper heed to the anti-Semitic bomb threats. Trump interpreted the question as an indictment not of his behavior but of his being I am the least anti-Semitic person that youve ever seen in your entire life! he trumpeted and turned the discussion toward the big, bad media. Forget about any persecution of Jews. Lets talk about the persecution of Trump.
You can be only so considerate to others when you never stop considering yourself. And the flamboyantly nonconformist culture of Trumps presidency has downsides. This administration shrugs off and throws away some rituals and niceties that do matter to people, estranging them in the process.
Gay Pride Month came and went without even a banal word of recognition from the White House. So while Trump likes to crow, in a hallucinatory fashion, that gays love him, we made do in June with a tweet from his outsourced conscience, by which of course I mean Ivanka.
Some of this is Steve Bannon and his ilk. Their idea of nationalism is chilly to the recognition of subgroups, including Jewish Americans.
Some of it boils down to an absent professionalism. Trump isnt matching the respectful choreography of other presidents because theres no one in his inner circle familiar with the dance. Kushner, Bannon, Stephen Miller and Reince Priebus are all new to this kind and level of work. They lack institutional memory, along with any awareness of how easily those blind spots become insensitivity.
I cant know definitively how Trump feels about Jews or gays or a whole lot else. But I can see clearly his sloppiness and self-absorption, and theyre cause enough for alarm.
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Why Does Donald Trump Keep Dissing Jews? - The New York Times - New York Times