Gary Cohn Image by Getty Images

By Nathan Guttman March 8, 2018

President Trump took a moment during Thursday’s cabinet meeting to bid farewell to his departing economic adviser Gary Cohn, but did so using language sometimes accused of having anti-Semitic characteristics.

“He’s been terrific,” Trump said of Cohn, who is Jewish. “He may be a globalist, but I still like him. He’s seriously globalist, there’s no question, but you know what, in his own way he’s also a nationalist because he loves our country.”

According to The New York Times, the term “globalist” is used in extreme right-wing circles with “distinct xenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic overtones” and refers to “a conspiratorial worldview: a cabal that likes open borders, diversity and weak nation states, and that dislikes white people, Christianity and the traditional culture of their own country.”

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Trump frequently uses the term to refer to people like Cohn who hold an economic philosophy that favors free trade and open markets. When he described Cohn as a globalist Trump drew a smiles from cabinet members around the table, including Cohn himself who was sitting behind the president.

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney also tried to use the term in a playful way on Tuesday, tweeting: “As a right-wing conservative…I never expected the coworker I would work closest and best with would be a ‘globalist.’”

In the past, the term “globalist” was used by ‘alt-right’ activists to attack Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is also Jewish.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

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