Trump’s attack on George Soros is ludicrous. It also endangers Jews (and everyone else)
The dangers of baseless conspiracies involving George Soros have been evident since the Tree of Life shooting
President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the Jewish billionaire George Soros as the reason for unrest and violence in America. Graphic by Nora Berman/Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Emily Tamkin August 27, 2025
“George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America,” President Donald Trump posted to his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday.
“We’re not going to allow these lunatics to rip apart America any more, never giving it so much as a chance to ‘BREATHE,’ and be FREE. Soros, and his group of psychopaths, have caused great damage to our Country!”
Blaming Soros, the 95-year-old Hungarian-born Jewish philanthropist, financier and Holocaust survivor, for violence in America is ludicrous (and ironic: if an aged Soros had the power Trump says he does, surely Trump would not be president).
It is also antisemitic and, perhaps most pressingly, has a proven history of being dangerous.
Often, when conspiracies around Soros are described as antisemitic, someone will pop up to say that criticism of Soros isn’t antisemitic. And that is correct. Criticism of him or what he has actually said and done is not. However, Trump’s post does not describe Soros’s actual actions, but rather presents a fever dream in which one Jewish person is powerful and hateful enough to tear the nation apart, thus bringing us safely into the realm of antisemitism.
Trump and his supporters traffic in antisemitism with some regularity. In 2023, for example, he baselessly blamed Soros for the fact that he faced criminal charges for sexual abuse. In 2020, reactionary talking heads pushed the idea that Soros was responsible for Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. In 2018, as President, Trump, echoed right-wing media and politicians and suggested (admittedly with prompting from a reporter) that Soros was potentially behind a migrant caravan approaching the southern border of the United States.
This was a few days after the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was attacked by a shooter, who was furious about Jews supposedly flooding the country with immigrants.
To be clear: I am not saying that there is a straight line between Trump’s claims about Soros and the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history, or that Trump is responsible for the Tree of Life shooting. He was not; the shooter was. We do not need to wonder, however, if antisemitic conspiracies about Jewish degradation of the nation could be dangerous. We already know that they are deadly. For all of Trump’s talk of Jewish safety, this rhetoric and this thinking has tangibly made Jews less safe.
So, too, do we know that they do not only endanger Jews. In 2022, a shooter attacked a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, targeting Black shoppers. His manifesto was both racist and antisemitic, obsessed with the idea that white people were being replaced by non-white people. It echoed the Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy that elites (often Jewish) are orchestrating demographic change to weaken the true, white nation.
Trump is putting quite a lot on Soros. Even if the violence in this country were what he says it is, the idea that one philanthropist and his son would bear responsibility is nonsensical. But this isn’t just about Soros. It’s not even only about liberal civil society groups, though perhaps they, too, will suffer from Trump’s threat of racketeering charges.
Antisemitic conspiracies like the one Trump shared about an all-powerful Jew trying to corrode the nation for his own selfish gain don’t only endanger Soros (though a pipe bomb was found in his home in 2018). They also do not only endanger Jews. Sadly, these conspiracies make this entire country more violent, suspicious and less safe. They can send some individuals into the land of make-believe and others into a more dangerous version of reality.
Trump’s rhetoric divides the country between its rightful owners, who deserve to be free and breathe, and those who threaten them. These threats may appear to be your neighbors, but are actually lunatics doing the bidding of an all-powerful Jew. This framework is not only paranoid and divisive, but encourages violence, even as it purports to try to stop it.
And we know by now that Trump knows all this, too. It has been years of this rhetoric landing in manifestos. Since we cannot know his heart or mind, it’s impossible to say that he knows the dangerous impact of his words and doesn’t care. But perhaps we can make an educated guess.
