- Former President Donald Trump said that Jewish people "no longer love Israel."
- He also said that Jewish people "run the New York Times."
- The comments, which echo anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories, came in an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid.
Former President Donald Trump shared what he thought about American Jews in a recent interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid published on Friday by the podcast "Unholy: Two Jews on the news."
"People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel. I'll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country. It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress. And today I think it's the exact opposite," Trump told Ravid.
"I've said this for a long time, the Jewish people in the United States either don't like Israel or don't care about Israel," he continued.
"The New York Times hates Israel, hates them. And they're Jewish people that run the New York Times. I mean, the Sulzberger family," Trump went on, referring to A.G. Sulzberger, who is publisher and chairman of the newspaper.
Trump's comments play into an anti-Semitic trope that that Jews hold a greater allegiance to Israel than their own home country, otherwise known as "dual loyalty." Many American Jews have previously condemned similar rhetoric from the former president. His comments also echo anti-Semitc conspiracy theories that Jews control the media.
After playing an audio snippet of Trump's interview, Ravid offered his thinking to the podcasts hosts.
"It's not only about whether you're Jewish or not. It's a lot about whether you're liberal or conservative," Ravid said. "I think that for Trump, being liberal is a much bigger sin than being Jewish, but what can you do. It's the same folks."
Ravid noted that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is Jewish, and his daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism. Both served in senior White House roles under Trump's administration.
"At the end of the day, they were sort of stuck in the middle, meaning, they were liberals in a conservative administration," Ravid said of the couple. "I think they were sort of playing both camps, if not officially. And I think more than that, they're very conscious of Trump's strong sides and his more weaker sides. And they were, again, I think, they were trying their best to sort of balancing him out."
Trump has previously mocked Kushner over his background, saying during a White House meeting that "Jared's more loyal to Israel than the United States," according to journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book, "Peril."
Trump has made similar snide remarks about Jews in the United States. According to a Washington Post report published in September 2020, Trump once said that Jews "are only in it for themselves" and "stick together" in front of his administration officials after a phone call with Jewish lawmakers.
In April 2019, Trump told an audience of Jewish Americans that then-Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is "your prime minister." In August of that same year, Trump called Jews who are Democrats "disloyal."
Trump has also taken issue with the fact that he didn't receive a greater share of the Jewish vote in the 2020 presidential election.
"Look what I did with the embassy in Jerusalem and what I did with so many other things. Israel has never had a better friend, and yet I got 25% of the [Jewish] vote," he said in a call with religious groups in September. Trump was referring to his administration's decision to move the US embassy in Israel from the city of Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, completed in May 2018. The policy pleased Israel but sparked widespread outrage among Palestinians.