Washington:Â US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that any Jewish people who vote for Democrats are showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” prompting an outcry from critics who said the president’s remarks were promoting anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Trump made the comment in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office ahead of a meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.
Trump began by lashing out at Representatives Rashida Tlaib questioning the sincerity of her tears at a news conference where she talked about her decision not to travel to Israel to see her elderly grandmother, who lives in the occupied West Bank.
“Yesterday, I noticed for the first time, Tlaib with the tears,” Trump said. “All of the sudden, she starts with tears, tears. … I don’t buy it for a second, because I’ve seen her in a very vicious mood at campaign rallies, my campaign rallies, before she was a congresswoman. I said, ‘Who is that?’ And I saw a woman that was violent and vicious and out of control.”
At Trump’s urging, Israel last week blocked the pair from entering the country. Israel later agreed to a humanitarian visit for Tlaib to visit her grandmother who lives in the West Bank. Tlaib declined.
He then went on to attack Democrats more generally over the views of Tlaib and Represenatives Ilhan Omar. Both women have long been fierce critics of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. They support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a global protest of Israel known as BDS.
Read the article by Felicia Sonmez and John Wagner (AP) in The Sydney Morning Herald.