Donald Trump returned to bigoted form on Wednesday by lobbing yet another antisemitic attack against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States.
“Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said while speaking to reporters during a White House visit with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (or prime minister) of Ireland. “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.”
As is often the case, Trump’s unhinged remarks were not in response to any specific question or topic but came as part of a rant against congressional Democrats. They dared to criticize the recently passed House spending bill for empowering Trump and his top benefactor Elon Musk, who has been working to attack and decimate government agencies via his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Wednesday’s outburst was not the first time Trump has accused Schumer of no longer being Jewish. He made a post in February claiming that Palestinians were “people like Schumer,” and made the same argument last year while campaigning for the presidency. Trump’s comments were tangentially related to Schumer and other Democrats criticizing the Israeli government for Palestinian deaths as a result of the Israel-Hamas War.
Trump took the rhetoric even further last August, saying that Schumer declining to shake the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was evidence the Democrat “has become a Palestinian” and “a proud member of Hamas.”
Trump is an antisemite who said in 2024 that Jewish people who don’t vote for him “should have their head examined,” used the coded term “globalists” to blame unnamed figures for the recent drop in the stock market (the real cause was Trump’s tariff policy), and has used liberal Jewish financier George Soros as a bogeyman in his campaign materials.
Trump even said if he lost the election, it would be the fault of Jewish people.
His bigotry is bolstered by his co-President Musk, who bought Twitter, renamed it X, and turned it into a safe space for antisemitic content and went on to celebrate Trump’s election win with a Nazi salute. Trump even named the notoriously antisemitic actor Mel Gibson to be his “special ambassador” to Hollywood, and his Justice Department recently fired a pardon attorney who refused to restore the actor’s gun rights after a domestic violence conviction.
Despite his many bigoted attacks on Schumer, Trump claims to be opposed to antisemitism and ordered the arrest and subsequent disappearance of activist Mahmoud Khalil because he spoke out against Israel.
But Trump’s latest rhetoric is not a deviation from the norm: It’s Trump returning to form as the antisemite in chief.
