Sheldon Adelson Arrives at GOP Convention — Still No Sign of His Fat Checkbook

By Nathan Guttman July 20, 2016

Sheldon Adelson, perhaps the single most important Jewish donor to the Republican Party, showed up in Cleveland Tuesday for the party’s national convention.

The megadonor arrived to take part in a foreign policy discussion hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Adelson is expected to contribute up to $100 million to the Donald Trump campaign. But so far he has yet to actually fork over the cash, raising questions about whether and to what extent he plans to back the Donald.

The casino mogul hasn’t said anything about Trump since the Donald tweeted a controversial image of Hillary Clinton next to a star of David and a pile of cash that many Jews regard as anti-Semitic.

Adelson ignored questions about the tweet and about his planned donations as he arrived at the event, Politico reported.

My (incredibly unproductive) effort to interview Sheldon Adelson about Trump’s Star of David tweet. pic.twitter.com/S7CT3u3Pgq

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) July 19, 2016

The event also featured speeches by Adelson ally Newt Gingrich and Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.

Gingrich said he doesn’t believe Adelson is reconsidering his vow to support Trump.

“I doubt it,” he told Politico.

So far, Adelson’s call to Jewish donors to bankroll Trump has so far gone largely unanswered.

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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