Trump Says Anti-Semitism Is A Problem — But Doesn’t Have Any Solutions

President Trump at the Western Wall, May 22, 2017 Image by Getty Images

By JTA November 7, 2018

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump said he rejects white supremacism and anti-Semitism, but did not say how he would counter the phenomena and angrily rejected claims that his rhetoric spurs division.

Reporters peppered Trump with questions about a range of issues in a free-wheeling press conference on Wednesday after Trump’s Republican Party lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives but made gains in the Senate.

A number of reporters asked Trump about the dangers of right-wing extremism, especially in light of the massacre last month in Pittsburgh, when a gunman killed 11 Jews at a synagogue complex, the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history.

“It’s very sad, I hate to see it,” he said of anti-Semitism, and then he noted the praise he earned from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

“Many presidents have said they will build the embassy in Jerusalem, never happened, but it happened with me,” he said.

Pressed by the reporter on divisiveness and anti-Semitism in America, Trump said that the continued success of the American economy would help, and argued that he was closing the trade gap with China.

Another reporter asked whether Trump would restore funding for monitoring the extreme right that his Department of Homeland Security had cut. “I believe all hate is a problem, I do believe it’s a problem and it’s a problem we’re going to solve,” he said. Pressed for specifics, he said, “It’s a problem I don’t like a little bit.”

Trump lashed out at reporters who asked him whether his rhetoric was encouraging white nationalists, telling one that she herself was a racist for asking the question.

“That’s such a racist question,” he told Yamiche Alcindor, an African American reporter for PBS who had asked him whether his recent embrace of “nationalism” was a signal to white supremacists. “What you just said is so insulting to me.”

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO