Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz made waves last week. At the Minnesota state fair, he walked off when a reporter asked about the six hostages murdered by Hamas. Walz also told a Michigan radio station that anti-Israel protesters are “speaking out for all the right reasons” as he criticised Israel’s government but not Hamas.
Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, pitched to voters seeking an alternative. Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) annual leadership summit, making his case to Jewish voters.
He catalogued his administration’s policy changes, including exiting the Iran nuclear deal, imposing the “toughest ever sanctions on the [Iranian] regime”, leaving the United Nations Human Rights Council, “choking off money to Hamas”, recognising the Golan Heights as Israel’s, recognising Jerusalem as “Israel’s eternal capital”, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, and establishing the Abraham Accords.
Trump said the Biden-Harris administration, in contrast, has lavishly filled the Iranian regime’s coffers, delisted the Houthis as designated terrorists, and “blamed Israel for heinous acts of terror committed against its own citizens”.
Trump summarised the differences thus: “Harris is the candidate of the forces who want to destroy Western civilisation and Israel. I am the candidate of those who want to defend Western civilisation, defend Israel and defend, of course, the United States of America.”
In a second term, Trump promised to “support Israel’s right to win its war on terror” and “restore stability and peace in the Middle East”. He said his administration would further “arrest the pro-Hamas thugs who vandalise federal property, and I will put every single college president on notice: the American taxpayer will not subsidise the creation of terrorist sympathisers on American soil. Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda, or they will lose their accreditation and federal support. No money will go to them, if they don’t.”
Trump added, “(In) the Republican Party we know that militant antisemitism and support for terror have no place in a civilised society. They have no place. We must reject antisemitism in our schools, reject it in our foreign policy, reject it in our immigration system, and reject it at the ballot box this November.”
Eleven months after October 7, Trump’s message should theoretically appeal to Jewish Democrats and independents troubled by the Biden-Harris administration’s weak support for Israel and inaction on domestic antisemitism. And yet they haven’t stampeded toward Trump. Sounding baffled, Trump asked: “Who are the 50 per cent of Jewish people that are voting for these people that hate Israel and don’t like the Jewish people?”
Voters vary, but two examples within the Trump-Vance campaign’s control merit mentioning. First, as Trump told the RJC, “I say it constantly, if you have them [Democrats] to support and you’re Jewish, you have to have your head examined.” Trump has, indeed, said that repeatedly. But instead of insulting voters, he should make his policy case and welcome their rethink.
Second, the campaign’s closeness with Fox News host turned podcaster Tucker Carlson raises questions. Last week, Carlson hosted an amateur historian he called “the most important popular historian working in the United States today”. The guest dubbed Winston Churchill the war’s “chief villain” and “a psychopath” and implied Jews pushed Britain into the war. He also characterised the Nazis as “completely unprepared” for the “millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners, and so forth… and they just threw these people into camps, and millions of people ended up dead”. The guest described a Nazi asking whether murdering prisoners would be more humane than starvation, before noting, “I argue with my Zionist interlocutors about this all the time with regard to the current war in Gaza.” Carlson pushed back on neither the Holocaust denial nor inversion.
This matters because vice presidential nominee JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr are both scheduled to appear with Carlson this month.
A Vance spokesman said: “Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson.”
Cancel culture is the wrong frame, though. The right frame is Trump’s. He says his campaign is about protecting Western civilisation. That should include promoting accurate Western history, opposing “militant antisemitism” from all sources, and not closely associating with anyone amplifying it.
Trump and Vance have a policy case to make to Jewish voters alienated by Harris and Walz. However, if Trump and Vance distract swing voters with negative comments and associations, those voters may never even hear it.
