These strange missteps weren’t limited to Trump himself. In the waning weeks of the campaign, Trump also spoke about a global cabal of financiers meeting in secret to help Clinton and undermine US sovereignty, the type of conspiratorial comments that my colleague Yochi Dreazen noted have been used to justify the hatred of Jews for decades. (That type of star has long been known as a “Star of David.”) The campaign claimed it was a “sheriff’s star,” but later replaced it with a different image. It was widely seen as a nod to anti-Semitic canards about Jews and power. It hasn’t been for Trump.ĭuring the 2016 election campaign, the Trump camp flirted with anti-Semitic memes and images, including tweeting a six-pointed star atop a pile of money next to an image of Hillary Clinton. Before taking a look at what he said, it’s worth remembering why there was so much unease in the first place. More than 7,800 Jews signed a petition asking the museum to deny the president a platform. Those types of administration stumbles, following a campaign that failed to forcefully reject anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery, meant Trump’s appearance sparked protests among Jewish groups and quiet backroom rumbling among museum board members. The speech, and a similar statement made to the World Jewish Congress earlier this week, followed months of Holocaust-related gaffes, including official White House statements that quite literally avoided mentioning Jewish victims of the Holocaust and press secretary Sean Spicer’s baffling comments that implied Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad was worse than Hitler and referred to Nazi death camps as “Holocaust centers.” Solemn as they were, the most remarkable aspect of the speech were not the words themselves, but the identity of the man giving them - and the continued controversy over the administration’s past comments about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. “We will never, ever be silent in the face of evil again.” “Those who deny the Holocaust are accomplice to this horrible evil,” he said in remarks in the rotunda of the US Capitol commemorating the Days of Remembrance surrounding Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. He highlighted the uniquely Jewish nature of the tragedy, derided Holocaust denial as well as anti-Semitism, and bluntly labeled the mass slaughter of European Jewry “history’s darkest hour.” President Donald Trump delivered the type of strong, somber speech about the Holocaust Tuesday morning that US presidents from both parties have made for decades.
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