By now, you know that Donald Trump claims that the women who have come forward to say he sexually assaulted them are lying because they were too ugly to be even worth the effort. But what you don’t know is that Trump crossed yet another bright line. We now know that Trump believes the world’s banks are out to defeat him. And we now know that a major-party presidential candidate is a stone-cold anti-Semite.
Believe it or not, the most horrifying moment of Trump’s speech in West Palm Beach on Thursday night wasn’t when Trump harrumphed that we should just “look at” his accusers before we take them seriously. It came well before that. Trump began his speech by saying that he was fighting to replace a government controlled by “a failed and corrupt … political establishment” with a government “controlled by you, the American people.”
To hear Trump talk, this establishment and “the financial and media corporations that fund it” will stop at nothing to defeat him so they can continue to take money from this country and funnel it to “large corporations and political entities.” But then Trump went way off the deep end.
“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure. We’ve seen this first hand in the WikiLeaks documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.”
This isn’t just a dog whistle, folks. This is a dog whistle being blown into a megaphone. For those who don’t know, “international banks” is a “polite” term for “Jews” in anti-Semitic circles–and I use the term “polite” very loosely. By blaming his troubles on a massive conspiracy by banks and media companies, Trump is trying to mainstream one of the oldest anti-Semitic smears in the book.
Lest you think I’m making this up, listen to the full speech here. Trump’s ranting about “international banks” and a global conspiracy against him starts a minute into the speech. And lest you think he was kidding, a quasi-official campaign Twitter account blasted out this hours after the speech.
"@HillaryClinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich" her donors. – DJT
— Official Team Trump (@TeamTrump) October 13, 2016
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this kind of blatant anti-Semitic bile from the red team. Earlier this year, veteran culture warrior Gary Cass declared that only Christian men are qualified to hold office–an obvious swipe at Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish.
This summer saw Trump’s social media team tweet out a picture of Hillary next to red Star of David on top of a pile of cash–a meme that had been floating around the white nationalist web for some time. Several journalists who have dared to call out Trump have been blasted with vicious anti-Semitic attacks by trolls from the alt-right acting in Trump’s name–and Trump has more or less twiddled his thumbs.
But hearing this kind of bilge fall from the lips of Trump himself takes it to another level. You mean to tell me that a guy who was raised in Queens, went to an Ivy League school, and now lives in Manhattan doesn’t know what a rant about “international banks” means?
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, was well aware what Trump meant–and let it be known that he isn’t pleased.
.@TeamTrump should avoid rhetoric&tropes that historically have been used ag. Jews & still spur #antisemitism. Lets keep hate out of cmpgn https://t.co/9LMnurQ3Xg
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) October 13, 2016
I seem to recall that at least one religious right leader, Ralph Reed, stated that he is more concerned about the Iran nuclear deal being an “existential threat to Israel” than anything Trump said on the Access Hollywood tape. Um, Ralph? Wouldn’t a president who finds it even remotely acceptable to blow anti-Semitic dog whistles be more of a threat to Israel than any nuclear deal?
While we’ve been focused on Trump’s debauched and potentially criminal behavior toward women, we’ve been ignoring a potential 500-pound gorilla in the room. It cannot be repeated often enough–the Republican candidate for president is a full-blown anti-Semite. It’s all the more reason that he must not only be defeated, but defeated in a landslide. It will put both parties on notice that they cannot nominate manifestly unfit candidates and get away with it.
(featured image courtesy DonkeyHotey, available under a Creative Commons-BY license)
