How many times does President Donald Trump have to refute the same lies? President Trump is not a white supremacist, nor does he support or encourage white supremacists. President Trump is not a racist. President Trump is not Hitler, not a Nazi, and not antisemitic!
This week, the RJC has spoken out forcefully against lies about President Trump. Here are just a few examples.
• We pushed back hard against Joe Biden comparing President Trump to Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief.
In a statement, RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said: “The rule in debate is that if your only argument is to call your opponent a Nazi, you have no argument at all. Instead of engaging in a debate on policy, Joe Biden has descended to name-calling and Holocaust references.
“There is no place in political discourse for Holocaust imagery or comparing candidates to Nazis. It’s offensive, and it demeans the memory of the Holocaust, the suffering of the victims, and the lessons we must learn from that terribly dark chapter of history. Joe Biden has been in politics long enough to know this. To diminish the horrors of Goebbels and the Nazis by trying to attack the president with that comparison is, as we say, a shanda.”
More here.
• We objected to an ad by JDCA, in which Jewish Democrats likened America under President Trump to Germany during the rise of the Nazis.
Matt Brooks with the Republican Jewish Coalition told Fox News that he hesitated to give any credence to what amounted to a "PR stunt."
"The misappropriation of the Holocaust for political gains is unacceptable," Brooks said. "It is repugnant to everybody who lost family in the holocaust."
• RJC tweeted out part of the transcript from President Trump’s remarks after Charlottesville and noted:
The President is no stranger to condemning white nationalism and antisemitic hate and violence.
• We pointed to actions President Trump has taken to fight white nationalists:
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, also pointed to actions Trump has recently taken against far right extremism. Last week, Trump said he would designate the Ku Klux Klan (as well as Antifa) as a domestic terrorist group during his second term, something he also promised to do in 2019.
“That is not the action of someone who doesn’t understand the threats we’re facing with white nationalists,” Brooks said, while acknowledging that Trump could have answered Wallace’s question better by just pointing to his “strong record.”
Tonight, we were proud to host a virtual town hall event with Boris Epshteyn, Strategic Advisor to the Trump Campaign & Co-Chair of Jewish Voices for Trump, and RJC National Chairman Norm Coleman. The two compared the records of Donald Trump and Joe Biden on a number of issues, including the question of antisemitism from the left and from the right. Boris Epshteyn talked about President Trump’s frequent denunciations of white supremacists, saying:
I don’t know what else he could do. He’s denounced white supremacists over 20/30 times, going back to 2016 when he denounced David Duke. No wonder David Duke is supporting Biden now, since Trump classified the KKK as a terrorist group. The president of the United States has denounced white supremacists time and time again. And by the way, he did that at the debate! Let’s not forget that context is important. The media treats us Americans as dummies, but we aren’t dummies. We see the reality; we see the truth. What happened there was that Chris Wallace was supposed to be asking Joe Biden if Joe Biden denounces Antifa. Well as a precursor to that, he asks the President if he denounces white supremacists… and he said, “sure I do!” That was pretty clear!
A recording of tonight’s virtual town hall will be available for viewing online soon. Watch your email for details.
When it comes to comments that President Trump has made, it is important to look at transcripts of his remarks, the factual record of his words. Here are some examples.
President’s words at the debate last night.
President Trump’s comment after the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. (Official White House transcript here.)
Note these remarks in the President’s statement from the White House on August 14, 2017, after the violence in Charlottesville.
With regard to the “fine people” comment that is so often brought up in this context, it is important to read the full transcript to understand what was said. President Trump was commenting on local residents, according to reports, who were in the park that Saturday to protest the proposed removal of a historic statue. At the same time, President Trump strongly condemned the neo-Nazis and the Antifa rioters who engaged in the violence.
