David Friedman Blasts Jews Who Call Trump Anti-Semitic as ‘Morons’

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
David Friedman has a way with words.
Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel is already being slammed for calling liberal Jews “worse than kapos” in a column on a far-right website.
Now, a November interview in which Friedman said that Senator Al Franken and others who accused the Trump campaign of anti-Semitism “sound like morons” is circulating on social media.
Asked by the website Jewish Insider about accusations that a Trump campaign ad trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes, Friedman lashed out at the Anti-Defamation League.
“Lloyd Blankfein is the head of Goldman Sachs,” Friedman said. “He’s not being criticized because he’s Jewish; he’s being criticized because he runs a bank that has extraordinarily close ties to Hillary Clinton and has paid her almost $1 million to give speeches that Hillary Clinton tried to keep secret.”
Since his election victory, Trump has nominated three Goldman Sachs Group Inc. officials to senior positions in his administration.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
