Michael Wolff: Trump ‘Aware Of Who’s Jewish In A Way That Feels Creepy’
President Donald Trump visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum on May 23, 2017, in Jerusalem, Israel. Image by GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images
By Aiden Pink January 8, 2018
The author of the bombshell new book exposing the inner workings of the White House said in an interview on Monday that President Trump is “aware of who is Jewish in a way that feels creepy.”
Michael Wolff, the author of the new book “Fire and Fury,” also said on MSNBC that he believes that Trump is racist, xenophobic and sexist, and that he views women in “as transactional a way as he thinks about everything.”
When asked by host Katy Tur whether he thinks Trump is anti-Semitic, Wolff demurred, saying that former White House chief advisor Steve Bannon — himself accused of anti-Semitism — thought Trump was a racist but not an anti-Semite.
Trump has repeatedly rejected claims that he is anti-Semitic. His daughter Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism, and she and her husband Jared Kushner are high-level advisors to the president (as are other Jews like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn). But the president has been criticized for retweeting anti-Semites and for failing to unequivocally condemn neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia last year.
In his book, Wolff quoted former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger describing the internal battle between Bannon and senior advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner for control of Trump’s agenda as “a war between the Jews and the non-Jews.”
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
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 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.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
