The Logic of Doug Emhoff’s Trump Warning – The Forward

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff addresses Jewish voters during a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 80 site in Southfield, Michigan last Sunday. Photo by Getty Images

Arno Rosenfeld
October 29, 2024

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff gave a big speech on anti-Semitism in Pittsburgh last night, trying to convince undecided Jewish voters in Pennsylvania that his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, is a safer choice for them than former President Donald Trump.

Despite Trump’s various offensive comments about Jews, a recent poll of Jewish voters by the conservative Manhattan Institute found that among the 15% who identified as independents, 44% believe Republicans have better views on “security, Israel and anti-Semitism,” compared with with 35% who preferred Democrats.

I have a few thoughts about why this might be, including:

• Trump and his allies may say bad things about Jews, but the left bears much of the responsibility for violent demonstrations against Israel last year that some Jews say demonized the community.
• Some believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in workplaces and universities, which Democrats typically support, fuel anti-Semitism on the left; The poll found that 34% of independent Jewish voters believe DEI increases anti-Semitism.
• Many Jews spend time in liberal spaces, including on college campuses, so rising anti-Semitism among progressives may seem more direct and destabilizing than anti-Semitism among conservatives.
• When it comes to policy, Trump has promised uncritical support for Israel and a crackdown on what conservative politicians close to his campaign call an internal “Hamas support network” and blame for protests on college campuses and rising anti-Semitism.

How can Harris win over these voters? Last night in Pittsburgh, her husband decided to try to meet them where they were. So while Emhoff criticized Trump’s reports of praise for Nazi generals and accusations of Jewish disloyalty, he also accepted the premise that Trump aligned himself with the Jews before cautioning that this is not true friendship.

“If it were in his selfish interests, Trump would turn his back on Israel and the Jewish people in a heartbeat. He will do this whenever anti-Semitism rears its ugly head in this country,” Emhoff said. “We will never have to wonder where our government stands.”

Emhoff, who has been the senior spokesman for American Jews on the campaign, has been careful not to say much about where he believes criticism of Israel intersects with anti-Semitism. But he used the speech to hint that Trump may even be responsible for the left-wing anti-Semitism that has spread since he left the White House: “It is no coincidence that the situation for American Jews has worsened since Trump entered politics “just like they do so much,” he said.

Emhoff argued that Trump is an “agent of chaos and cruelty” and “whenever chaos and cruelty are given the green light, Jew-hatred has historically not been far behind.”

“Chaos and violence” could refer not only to the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, but also to the anonymous vandals who defaced the home of the Jewish director of the Brooklyn Museum with a symbol Hamas uses to represent its military goals.

It’s a framework that seeks to redirect blame for the rise of anti-Semitism from, say, progressive policies like DEI or Harris’ sympathetic statements about the Gaza protest movement, to Trump’s shattering of taboos and political norms that once held radicals on both the right and leftists in Gaza. more stringent verification.

Exit polls next week should show us whether it worked.