Trump criticized for again using term ‘Shylock’ during speech at a rally

Several former Republican lawmakers on Tuesday criticized US President Donald Trump for again using a term considered antisemitic.

Trump was defending Kansas Senator Roger Marshall against Democrats’ ads that criticize the physician for aggressive collection of small medical debts from his patients.

Trump quipped that the ads paint Marshall as a “Shylock-type guy,” a slur that plays on stereotypes of Jewish people and is derived from William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”

Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, said “Trump once again lets loose his antisemitic rhetoric” and calls it “a bizarre defense of” Marshall, the Kansas senator.

Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, noted on social media that “Trump publicly used the antisemitic term again” and predicted “no one on the right” would condemn it.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the president’s use of the word.

Trump: Roger Marshall was mandated by law to request money owed from patients. You have to by law go after those people, and they made it like he was some kind of a Shylock type guy, I don’t know if I should be saying it. pic.twitter.com/P8k8S27JU4

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 20, 2026

Last year, Trump said he did not know the antisemitic history of the term after he was criticized for using it during a rally in Iowa.

“The term ‘Shylock’ is rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype. Regardless of intent, its use can reinforce harmful tropes about Jews and normalize language that has long been used to target the Jewish community,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement Tuesday that unlike its response the previous incident did not name Trump or refer directly to his comments.