Donald Trump rejected antisemitism. That doesn’t necessarily mean MAGA will
Regarding antisemites, the US president said, 'I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them.' But just because he believes something doesn't guarantee his voters do, too
Almost a decade ago, in the heat of the 2016 US presidential campaign, Jared Kushner wrote a high-profile essay that began with the words, “My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.”
The reason Kushner felt compelled to tell America that Donald Trump did not hate Jews was a meme Trump had recently tweeted, showing a picture of his rival Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of money, with the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” embedded in a Star of David.
The tweet, later deleted, solidified a worry at the time among many American Jews that the Republican candidate was either an antisemite himself or too accepting of antisemites among his supporters.
ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt said then that it was “long past time” for Trump to “take a stand against anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hate,” and a 2017 ADL poll found that 33 percent of Americans considered Trump antisemitic (50% did not).
Since then, as US president, Trump has taken several actions with the stated purpose of combating antisemitism. But at the same time, a public fight has erupted among his diehard supporters over whether or not to welcome open antisemites into their ranks.
In his sprawling interview with The New York Times last week, Trump weighed in, and condemned antisemitism. When asked whether antisemites should have a place in his Make America Great Again movement, he said, “No, I don’t. I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them.”
Does that mean his MAGA movement will now rid itself of antisemitism? Not necessarily. That’s partly because Trump has historically shown a reluctance to disavow antisemites among his followers — a tendency he also exhibited in the Times interview.
And it’s partly because the MAGA movement doesn’t always follow its leader in lockstep. Some of the president’s most loyal fans have departed from him on a few key issues. And at times, Trump has taken cues from them.
A lot of the infighting among Republicans lately has centered on Nick Fuentes, an explicitly antisemitic podcaster who has a large following and who sat recently for a friendly interview with right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson. When a Times reporter asked Trump to condemn Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, he did not.
“I don’t know him,” the president responded. When reminded that he had Fuentes over for dinner in 2022, Trump again pleaded ignorance, saying he didn’t know Fuentes was coming and doesn’t know him.
It’s a response Trump is fond of using, and one he’s employed in the past when asked about antisemitic supporters. When told in 2016 that former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke endorsed him, Trump replied, “I don’t know David Duke.” (On another occasion, he said he disavowed the endorsement.)
More famously, Trump equivocated on the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying there were ‘very fine people on both sides.” In a 2020 debate with then-candidate Joe Biden, when asked to condemn the far-right Proud Boys, he responded, “Stand back and stand by.” Soon afterward, Proud Boy apparel featuring the phrase was being sold online.
So while Trump has made his personal opposition to antisemitism clear, that doesn’t mean he’s about to lead a campaign to root it out of his base. After the Proud Boys comment, conservative pundit Rick Santorum noted that something “the president doesn’t like to do… is say something bad about people who support him.”
And just because Trump holds a position doesn’t mean the MAGA movement agrees. Before Trump ordered US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June during the Israel-Iran war, a poll found that most of his voters wanted the US to stay out. (The numbers changed after the strikes.)
And there’s at least one prominent case where opposition from MAGA preceded a shift in Trump’s policy.
Republicans as well as some Democrats praised Operation Warp Speed, the successful effort that got COVID-19 vaccines into people’s arms by December 2020. It led to a sharp reduction in the risk of death, and at the time, Trump said it was a “monumental national achievement.”
But in the subsequent months, a partisan gulf opened up on getting the COVID shot. By September 2021, Gallup found, 92% of Democrats had gotten the vaccine — and just 56% of Republicans. Many of the people fueling anti-vaccine rhetoric in the US came from the right.
By last year, Trump had followed their lead. Even as he continued to praise Warp Speed, he also empowered the anti-vax movement, installing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of its leading proponents, as health secretary. RFK Jr. has proceeded to scale back federal vaccine recommendations, including on the COVID shot.
Most Republicans, polls show, personally oppose antisemitism (and support Israel). But a survey last month by the conservative Manhattan Institute also found that, among the current GOP, just 48% say antisemites aren’t welcome in their political movement. The remainder either say they are antisemitic themselves (12%) or feel antisemites should be either tolerated or that the party should seek their votes. A sliver said they aren’t sure.
How will Trump relate to those people? He has made clear that he is not one of them. Whether they will be able to remain in his MAGA movement is a different question.