Elise Stefanik booed at ADL conference for saying Oct. 7 wouldn’t have happened under Trump
The U.N. ambassador-designate received cheers when she touted other Trump policies on Israel and antisemitism
House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) speaks to reporters at a press conference following a House Republican Conference meeting at the U.S. Capitol Building, July 18, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(JTA) — NEW YORK — Elise Stefanik mostly received cheers at an Anti-Defamation League conference as she promoted President Donald Trump’s record on Israel — from praising his proposal to deport foreign-born anti-Israel students to vowing to “dismantle” the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency.
But she was met with boos and a walkout from within the crowd when she backed Trump’s claim that, had he won the 2020 election, Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack would never have happened.
“Enough is enough, from capitals to campuses, we have watched too many with the power to act do nothing,” said Stefanik — a Republican congresswoman and Trump’s nominee for U.N. ambassador — near the beginning of her speech at the ADL’s “Never is Now” conference in New York City on Monday morning.
Then, to cheers, she added, “Under President Trump, America refuses to do nothing. I, as a leader in the United States Congress and the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, refuse to do nothing.”
The fulsome reception Stefanik received at the convention — ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called her “exactly what we need” at the United Nations — accentuates how the ADL has shifted its approach to Trump since he entered the White House for his first term. The ADL was consistently critical of Trump at that point, and at the “Never is Now” conference following Trump’s 2016 election, alluding to Trump floating the creation of a registry of Muslims, Greenblatt had vowed to register as a Muslim in solidarity.
Much of Greenblatt’s address Monday morning also focused on the rise of anti-Israel activity as well as antisemitism since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the outbreak of the war in Gaza. Stefanik also focused on those themes, speaking about the moment she went viral in 2023 for asking elite university leaders whether calls for the genocide of Jews were prohibited on their campuses. That moment made her a hero to many pro-Israel activists, while others were hesitant to embrace a close Trump ally who had echoed the “Great Replacement” theory.
In her speech on Monday, she touted Trump’s executive order on campus antisemitism last month, which threatened to deport foreign-born students who endorse terrorism. Her statement received loud cheers from the room.
“President Trump has made clear the importance of this issue,” she said. “In his first month in office he signed a historic executive order to combat antisemitism on our campuses and streets using every tool the government has. Any foreign student participating in these antisemitic acts must be stripped of their visas and immediately deported.”
But moments later, the crowd booed Stefanik for repeating Trump’s assertion that, had he won reelection in 2020, Hamas would not have launched its attack.
“I believe, and I think it’s quite obvious to the world, that if President Trump had remained in office, Oct. 7 would never have happened,” she said.
Following the boos, she added, “He has brought his pro-Israel policies to the White House, and in just a month, the world has watched as President Trump reasserted America First, peace-through-strength foreign policy.”
Dozens of people walked out following Stefanik’s statement. In the hall outside the auditorium, attendees were abuzz with discussion about what they had heard.
“We can’t tell members of Congress what they can and can’t say,” one person told another. In another pair, one man said, “It’s like retroactive campaigning for Trump.”
Ari Axelrod, a Jewish comedian, left the room following Stefanik’s statement. “I thought that she said a lot of things that were really necessary to be said,” he said. But he thought the hypothetical about Trump and Oct. 7 was offensive. “It seeks to make it an American political issue, and it is neither,” he said. “She should know better.”
Charlotte, a Holocaust educator from Montreal who declined to share her last name, said she walked out over the statement, calling it “so incendiary” and likened it to if Trump had said he would have prevented the Holocaust. She said she had sought assurances from ADL officials that Stefanik’s view was not the organization’s.
But she also praised Stefanik’s questioning in congressional hearings on antisemitism and said she had heard a lot she liked in the incoming U.N. ambassador’s comments. “I would hate for that to be the headline of the entire day,” she said about the boos. “Maybe she was just encouraged by the applause in the room. I don’t know.”
Three New York City women said they were disturbed by the negative response to Stefanik’s comments. (One said she had heard someone shout, “Give me a break.”)
“I think they suffer from TDS,” said one of the women who declined to give her name, referring to the so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” that the president’s supporters say afflicts his opponents.
“I think it’s not a day for politics,” the woman said. “It’s a day to leave the parties aside.”
Her friend Laura Quarles, a Brooklyn woman who said she was attending because she is an evangelical Christian, said she was “more all-in on Trump because of this,” referring to his policies on antisemitism and Israel. She said she understood that not all voters shared her priorities but, she said, “You cannot not acknowledge that he is the most pro-Israel president ever. Anyone who doesn’t believe that is sorely misinformed.”
Back on the main stage, Stefanik received cheers again when she called for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, to be eliminated. UNRWA is the chief humanitarian agency serving Palestinians, and Israel has consistently accused it and members of its staff of being complicit with or active participants in terror groups.
“We took the decisive action to defund UNRWA, the pro-Hamas terrorist front group who committed atrocities on Oct. 7,” she said. “We’re not only going to defund UNRWA, we must totally dismantle it.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
