How many times does President Donald Trump
have to refute the same lies? President Trump is not a white
supremacist, nor does he support or encourage white supremacists.
President Trump is not a racist. President Trump is not Hitler, not a
Nazi, and not antisemitic!
This week, the RJC has spoken out forcefully against lies about
President Trump. Here are just a few examples.
• We pushed
back hard against Joe Biden comparing President
Trump to Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s propaganda
chief.
In a statement, RJC Executive Director Matt
Brooks said: “The rule in debate is that if your only
argument is to call your opponent a Nazi, you have no argument at all.
Instead of engaging in a debate on policy, Joe Biden has descended to
name-calling and Holocaust references.
“There is no place in political discourse for Holocaust
imagery or comparing candidates to Nazis. It’s offensive, and it
demeans the memory of the Holocaust, the suffering of the victims, and
the lessons we must learn from that terribly dark chapter of history.
Joe Biden has been in politics long enough to know this. To diminish
the horrors of Goebbels and the Nazis by trying to attack the
president with that comparison is, as we say, a shanda.”
More here.
• We objected to an ad by JDCA, in which Jewish Democrats
likened America
under President Trump to Germany during the rise of the Nazis.
Matt Brooks with the Republican Jewish Coalition told Fox News
that he hesitated to give any credence to what amounted to a "PR
stunt."
"The misappropriation of the Holocaust for political gains is
unacceptable," Brooks said. "It is repugnant to everybody who lost
family in the holocaust."
• RJC
tweeted
out
part of the transcript from President Trump’s remarks after
Charlottesville and noted:
The President is no stranger to condemning white nationalism
and antisemitic hate and violence.
• We pointed
to actions
President Trump has taken to fight white nationalists:
Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish
Coalition, also pointed to actions Trump has recently taken against
far right extremism. Last week, Trump said he would designate the Ku
Klux Klan (as well as Antifa) as a
domestic terrorist group during his second term, something he also
promised to do in 2019.
“That is not the action of someone who doesn’t understand the
threats we’re facing with white nationalists,” Brooks said, while
acknowledging that Trump could have answered Wallace’s question better
by just pointing to his “strong record.”
Tonight, we
were proud to host a virtual town hall event with Boris
Epshteyn, Strategic Advisor to the Trump Campaign &
Co-Chair of Jewish Voices for Trump, and RJC National Chairman
Norm Coleman. The two compared the records of Donald
Trump and Joe Biden on a number of issues, including the question of
antisemitism from the left and from the right. Boris Epshteyn talked
about President Trump’s frequent denunciations of white supremacists,
saying:
I don’t know what else he could do. He’s denounced white
supremacists over 20/30 times, going back to 2016 when he denounced
David Duke. No wonder David Duke is supporting Biden
now, since Trump classified the KKK as a terrorist group. The
president of the United States has denounced white supremacists time
and time again. And by the way, he did that at the debate! Let’s not
forget that context is important. The media treats us Americans as
dummies, but we aren’t dummies. We see the reality; we see the truth.
What happened there was that Chris Wallace was
supposed to be asking Joe Biden if Joe Biden denounces Antifa. Well as
a precursor to that, he asks the President if he denounces white
supremacists… and he said, “sure I do!” That was pretty clear!
A recording of tonight’s virtual town hall will be
available for viewing online soon. Watch your email for
details.
When it comes to comments that President Trump has made, it is
important to look at transcripts of his remarks, the factual record of
his words. Here are some examples.
President’s words at the debate last night.
President Trump’s comment after the shooting at the Tree of Life
Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. (Official White House transcript
here.)
Note these remarks in the President’s statement from the White House
on August 14, 2017, after the violence in
Charlottesville.
With regard to the “fine people” comment that is so often
brought up in this context, it is important to read the full
transcript to understand what was said. President Trump was commenting
on local residents, according to reports, who were in the park that
Saturday to protest the proposed removal of a historic statue. At the
same time, President Trump strongly
condemned the neo-Nazis and the Antifa rioters who engaged in the
violence.
