Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Louis Farrakhan Praises Donald Trump for Shunning ‘Jewish Money’

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has praised Donald Trump for refusing to take donations from Jews in his race for the White House.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Farrakhan said in a sermon last week that the Republican frontrunner is the only presidential candidate “who has stood in front of [the] Jew­ish com­mu­nity, and said I don’t want your money.”

“Any time a man can say to those who con­trol the pol­i­tics of Amer­ica, ‘I don’t want your money,’ that means you can’t con­trol me,” Farrakhan said in a sermon at Chicago’s Mosque Maryam. “And they can­not afford to give up con­trol of the pres­i­dency of the United States.”

Farrakhan appeared to be referencing Trump’s remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition on December 3, when he said “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money. You want to control your politicians, that’s fine. Five months ago I was with you.”

At the time, the ADL said that it did not believe Trump was intentionally evoking anti-Semitic canards, but called on Trump to distance himself from such conspiracies.

Farrakhan has a long history of making racist, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Jewish comments, including blaming Israelis and Zionists for the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On the stump, Trump frequently boasts that his largely self-funded campaign puts him above the influence of traditional special interests. Trump’s claim has endeared him to anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists that believe a Jewish cabal covertly controls the United States.

Farrakhan is not the first anti-Semitic figure to voice support for Trump. Former KKK leader David Duke has praised Trump, but stopped short of a full endorsement, citing Trump’s friendliness to Jews and Israel.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.