Democrats blame Trump for anti-Semitism in Republican Party

Democrats blame Republican nominee Donald Trump for what they depicted as burgeoning anti-Semitism in his party.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, on Wednesday says the Republican convention has brought to the fore an “anti-Semitic environment that Donald Trump embraces.”

“The anti-Semitism that is threaded throughout the Republican Party of late goes straight to the feet of Donald Trump,” she says.

Wasserman Schultz’s blunt assessment is a clear sign that Democrats intend to include anti-Jewish bias among the offenses they say Trump has made more prominent. On a conference call on the third day of the Republican convention in Cleveland, Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish, join Reps. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who is black, in listing a litany of their grievances.

Wasserman Schultz includes the controversy over Trump’s use of an image that juxtaposed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with wads of cash, corruption charges and a red six-pointed star resembling a Star of David. She also refers to his reluctant disavowal of the support of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the Republican convention’s shutdown of comments on its YouTube livestream of the convention after anti-Semites flooded it with epithets when Linda Lingle, the Jewish former Hawaiian governor, addressed the hall.

“He shared anti-Semitic images on Twitter,” she says. “There is so much anti-Semitism in the Republican Party that on Monday night while Linda Lingle, the former gov of Hawaii who is Jewish was speaking, they shut down their live chat.”

— JTA