Campaigns battle for Jewish voters in neck-and-reck race

‘I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,’ Trump declares amid fascism claims

Second Gentleman Emhoff charges that GOP nominee would betray Jews and Israel ‘if it suited his personal interests,’ says he’d like to put a mezuzah on White House if Harris wins

Republican presidential nominee and former US president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at McCamish Pavilion, October 28, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Republican presidential nominee and former US president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at McCamish Pavilion, October 28, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Donald Trump told supporters Monday he is “not a Nazi,” using a rally in the final week of a bitter White House race to push back on accusations of authoritarianism, including from a former chief of staff who branded him a fascist.

As he and rival Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of one of the closest US presidential elections in modern times, each candidate and their teams have ramped up the political rhetoric, bringing an already simmering campaign to a boil.

Democrat Harris, who has accused Trump of stoking divisions, was crisscrossing Michigan on Monday while Republican Trump headed to Georgia, another of the decisive swing states, where he said critics are accusing him of being a modern-day “Hitler.”

“The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn’t voting for her is a Nazi,” Trump told a boisterous rally in Atlanta, while calling Harris a “fascist.”

“I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi.”

The comments come a day after Trump held a mega-rally in New York’s famed Madison Square Garden that was widely condemned for racist remarks that his allies made during the event.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and former first lady Melania Trump during at a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP/Alex Brandon)

They also follow recent publication of a New York Times interview in which Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, said the Republican fits the definition of a fascist — something Harris said she agreed with in a live CNN event last week.

Kelly also told the paper that Trump had remarked that “Hitler did some good things too” and that instead of the US military, he “wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had.”

‘Turn his back on a dime’

As both the Harris and Trump campaigns attempt to woo Jewish voters in the neck-and-neck race, Douglas Emhoff, the Jewish second gentleman, gave a speech just miles away from the worst attack on Jews in US history in which he said the GOP nominee would turn on the Jews “on a dime.”

“Donald Trump demands loyalty — but he is loyal to nothing but himself,” Emhoff said. “If it suited his personal interests, Trump would turn his back on Israel and the Jewish people on a dime.”

Emhoff said that voters had a choice of whether to empower the voices fighting antisemitism or those fomenting it — declaring that he and Harris were committed to “extinguishing this epidemic of hate.”

“There is a fire in this country, and we either pour water on it or we pour gasoline on it,” he said.

“One thing we know about antisemitism is that whenever chaos and cruelty are given a green light, Jew-hatred has historically not far behind,” Emhoff continued. “And that matters so much today because Donald Trump is nothing if not an agent of chaos and cruelty.”

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff waves as he arrives on stage to speak in support of his wife, Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris, at a Get Out the Early Vote rally in Hallandale Beach, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

He also said that if Harris was elected, he would look to see if he could place a mezuzah at the White House, saying they placed one on the US vice president’s residence in Washington after she was sworn in.

“Three months from now, the White House residence could – I have to check first — could have a mezuzah on its doorpost,” Emhoff said.

Additionally, he credited his wife for urging him to “use my voice” on the issue and said she has an “unwavering” commitment to support Israel. “Kamala feels it in her kishkes.”

The venue for Emhoff’s speech was across the street from Pittsburgh’s Soldiers and Sailor’s Community Hall, six years exactly after much of the community gathered there in shock after the massacre the day before, October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life synagogue, when a white supremacist murdered 11 worshipers.

A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 29, 2018. (Matt Rourke/AP)

Pennsylvania is also the swing state among seven at stake that has the largest Jewish population. Both campaigns have focused intensely on the 400,000 Jews in the state.

Trump has accused Harris and the incumbent president, Joe Biden, of endangering Israel with their policies, a claim he made again on Sunday night at a rally in Madison Square Garden.

Emhoff has been a longtime crusader against antisemitism and has turned his attention to criticizing Trump as the campaign season has advanced. “Donald Trump on Jews, it’s so vexing to me that any Jew supports him,” he said last week at a Jewish voters rally in Michigan. “He foments antisemitism everywhere he goes. He does not care about us.”

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