{"id":107397,"date":"2016-09-21T13:06:04","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=107397"},"modified":"2016-09-21T13:23:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T21:23:21","slug":"trump-uses-jews-to-his-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=107397","title":{"rendered":"Trump Uses Jews To His Advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"

LINK<\/a>: A ‘Jerusalem Post’ special report explores differing perspectives on the Republican presidential nominee’s decades-long relationship with the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

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…both supporters and detractors of the Republican nominee agreed on one critical revelation: Trump seems to have something of an affirmative prejudice toward Jews.<\/p>\n

NEW YORK: Near the end of his debt-ridden ownership of the Plaza Hotel, Donald Trump summoned Abe Foxman to breakfast at its iconic Palm Court. The real estate tycoon had a bone to pick with the Anti-Defamation League.<\/p>\n

Foxman, then ADL\u2019s national director, sat waiting for half an hour at the owner\u2019s usual corner table. Trump finally walked in blustering, hand outstretched.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Foxman,\u201d he began, \u201cTrump never apologizes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foxman\u2019s colleague, Art Teitelbaum, had recently criticized Trump for his tactics in Palm Beach \u2013 a city long marred by discrimination \u2013 battling the city council over turning his estate at Mar-a-Lago into a private social club. Trump was accusing the Florida township of antisemitism, claiming that it was opposed to his efforts because his club was going to welcome members of all races and creeds, including Jews and African-Americans.<\/p>\n

The ADL\u2019s leadership had seen this phenomenon up close: Teitelbaum and Foxman were in the trenches fighting discrimination in Palm Beach already back in 1964. There was still antisemitism there three decades later, and they expected discrimination to persist. \u201cBut that has nothing to do with Trump\u2019s plans to build at Mar-a-Lago,\u201d Teitelbaum told members of the press at the time, suggesting Trump was using Jews as a negotiating ploy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho the f**k is this guy, Teitelbaum?\u201d Trump asked Foxman, according to a version of the 1994 conversation as recalled by the ADL leader. \u201cAbe, it\u2019s antisemitism. All my members will be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald \u2013 that\u2019s antisemitism,\u201d Foxman said. \u201cYou don\u2019t know who your members will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump appeared shocked, and privately backed off his use of the term at Foxman\u2019s explicit request. But Trump apparently did not understand the problem. In his mind, the caste of Jews was complimentary \u2013 if still a caste nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say that only Jews will be members meant that only Jews have money \u2013 it was stereotypic,\u201d Foxman recalled in a recent interview. \u201cFor him, it may have been an assessment of business opportunities. He\u2019s a shrewd businessman.\u201d…<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, Donald Trump and his relationship with the Jews is the latest chapter in a very long history of ambivalence and dichotomous relations,\u201d Jonathan Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History, said in an interview. \u201cThe line between philosemitism and antisemitism is often a difficult one \u2013 the line is thin. It\u2019s not bright red. Often you can find within the same person both tendencies, and Trump is a study in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

…\u201cHe surrounds himself oddly enough with Jewish personnel, both then and now: his real estate lawyer is Jewish, his house counsel is Jewish, his controller is Jewish, his chief of staff, chief financial officer, executive vice president, his first executive vice president \u2013 I was his litigator for 15 years,\u201d Jay Goldberg, who worked for Trump from 1990 to 2005, said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Goldberg navigated Trump through both of his divorces in the 1990s with Ivana Zeln\u00edkov\u00e1 and Marla Maples. Aware of Fred\u2019s past, Goldberg warned against holding deeds of the father against the son: \u201cNo attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood,\u201d he said, quoting the Constitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about the Jewish community and I really think about it, I can\u2019t think of one Christian person on his senior staff,\u201d said Goldberg, who will vote for Trump in November. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to me. It\u2019s almost prejudice in favor of Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n

…\u201cI\u2019ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money,\u201d Trump said, according to the 1991 biography. \u201cI hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.\u201d <\/p>\n

…Schwartz would often hear Trump talk about Jews \u2013 a group that he quintessentially characterized as shrewd accountants and lawyers, the writer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I would describe his perception of Jews is that he thinks of them in very simple and very stereotypical terms,\u201d Schwartz said in an interview. \u201cMy feeling was, \u2018I figured out how to use Jews to my advantage.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

…\u201cDonald is clearly not an antisemite \u2013 he\u2019s just neutral,\u201d said a former senior Trump Organization employee, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. \u201cHe\u2019s not a supporter of the community. If it\u2019s to his advantage, then it works for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

…\u201cI don\u2019t really use the term white nationalism, but I do want to preserve my heritage \u2013 just like Jews do,\u201d said David Duke, a prominent white power activist, offering an explanation of why his worldview attracts him to the Trump campaign. \u201cAnd I think deep down inside, Donald Trump knows where his roots are. He\u2019s concerned about the general heritage of this country. The fact that some of his family is intermarried doesn\u2019t really change that.\u201d<\/p>\n

…Toward the end of an hour-long interview, Duke put himself in Trump\u2019s shoes to comport his perspective with the candidate\u2019s lifelong relationship with the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018I\u2019m going to be quiet,\u2019\u201d Duke surmised of Trump\u2019s thinking, \u201c\u2019I\u2019m going to gain as much power as I can, and when the time comes, I\u2019m going to do what I can for my people. \u2018\u201d <\/p>\n

But to cast Jews in positive Trumpian terms \u2013 smart, shrewd, deal maker \u2013 still amounts to degradation equivalent to the sexist act of calling a woman a 10, said Maurice Samuels, director of Yale University\u2019s Program for the Study of Antisemitism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAffirmative prejudice is a good term, and I prefer it to philosemitism,\u201d said Samuels in an interview. \u201cAs soon as you begin viewing Jews as a group, either positively or negatively, you\u2019re veering into very problematic territory. It\u2019s a process of \u2018othering\u2019 and separating that usually doesn\u2019t end well for Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

…\u201cPart of the problem with Donald Trump is that he seems to stereotype different groups \u2013 Muslims, Hispanics, blacks and Jews,\u201d Sarna concluded. \u201cHe seems not even to understand that in the era in which we live, that\u2019s precisely what we\u2019re trying to move away from: Group stereotypes and definitions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LINK: A ‘Jerusalem Post’ special report explores differing perspectives on the Republican presidential nominee’s decades-long relationship with the Jewish community. …both supporters and detractors of the Republican nominee agreed on one critical revelation: Trump seems to have something of an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-jews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107397"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107411,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107397\/revisions\/107411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}