WATCH: Bernie Sanders Slams Trump’s Remarks About ‘Disloyal’ Jews
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the Frank LaMere Native American Presidential Forum on August 20, 2019 in Sioux City, Iowa. Image by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
By Aiden Pink August 21, 2019
Senator Bernie Sanders, the most high-profile Jewish figure running for the Democratic presidential nomination, offered a retort to President Trump on Tuesday night, a few hours after the president said that Jews who vote Democratic were either uninformed or show “great disloyalty.”
“I am a proud Jewish person, and I have no concerns about voting Democratic,” Sanders said at a campaign rally in Sioux City, Iowa. “And in fact, I intend to vote for a Jewish man to become the next president of the United States.”
My message to Trump: I am a proud Jewish person and I have no concerns about voting Democratic. pic.twitter.com/vNEQfRnb5f
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 21, 2019
President Trump made his remarks from the Oval Office in response to a journalist’s question about Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who were barred from entering Israel last week, a move that Trump supported. Sanders and other Democratic presidential candidates condemned the Israeli government for the move.
Many American Jewish organizations condemned Trump’s language, saying that it echoed anti-Semitic tropes.
“It’s unclear who [Trump] is claiming Jews would be ‘disloyal’ to, but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted. “As we’ve said before, it’s possible to engage in the democratic process without these claims. It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football.”
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
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