Donald Trump is not a friend of the Jews - opinion

Last week, Newsweek reported that Donald Trump, speaking at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, declared – for the umpteenth time – that “he is the better candidate for Jewish voters, saying that any Jew who votes for the Democratic ticket needs to get ‘their head examined.’”

Though it is no secret Trump had been peddling that myth for quite some time – freely assigning mental illness labels and cognitive impairment to any Jew who votes Democratic – what has not been spoken about is how skillfully he manipulated the progressives in the Democratic Party to topple Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s chances of being chosen as Harris’s vice presidential running mate.

Marc Caputo, national political reporter for The Bulwark, in an article titled “Trump World Fueled an Anti-Shapiro Whisper Campaign,” quoted a Trump campaign adviser who said: “Where we could, we amplified the leftists on Twitter. We fed Shapiro [opposition research] to the media. We did what we could to create more noise and discontent.” 

The Trump camp succeeded in its sabotage of Shapiro. After all, it was not hard to foment anti-Jewish sentiment in this incendiary post-October 7 world – marked by the raging anti-Israel protests on college campuses and in the streets.

On the surface, one may simply chalk this up to run-of-the-mill politicking. Shapiro’s more or less centrist views – support for school voucher programs, opposition to a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, and so forth – risked pulling votes away from the Trump/Vance ticket. So, Trump used cunning to preempt Shapiro from getting on the ticket in the first place.

But on a deeper level, Trump’s machinations had a far greater effect. And it may have actually alloyed the patronage he had enjoyed from certain sectors of the Jewish community that previously pledged support for him.

You see, it’s been 24 years since a Jew has been chosen as a vice presidential running mate. So, when Shapiro was named recently as one of the three finalists – undoubtedly leading the small group of contenders – the same feelings of exultation abounded among Jews both in the US and around the world, as when US senator Joseph Lieberman (now deceased) had been chosen as Al Gore’s vice presidential running mate.

With the rumors of Shapiro leading as the front-runner among the shortlist of potential nominees, we thought perhaps we’d finally broken the barrier. I spoke to friends, neighbors, and relatives about this dream come true. We felt enormous pride.

No doubt, it was a terrible letdown when Shapiro was passed over, and that was something many of us in the Jewish community had to process. It was also apparent that Trump’s sinister role did not end there. Rubbing salt on the wound, the Trump/Vance team immediately chastised Harris as antisemitic and cowardly for skipping over Shapiro and choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate instead.

Trump's mind games

What a Machiavellian game Trump was playing. First, he incited the progressives to eschew Shapiro – wreaking havoc in the Democratic Party and posing a serious threat to unity among the Democratic voters. Then, after Harris had to make the best decision to hold the party together, Trump railed against the Harris campaign as cowering to “antisemites” on the progressive Left.

In reacting to the Shapiro disappointment, I posted a reader comment on the San Diego Jewish World website: 

 “For those old enough to remember, I was immediately reminded of how my family... felt when president Lyndon Johnson cajoled associate Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg to leave his venerated position on the US Supreme Court to serve as US ambassador to the UN, on the pretext that he was urgently needed to effectuate an ending to the Vietnam War. Everyone in the Jewish community knew that getting Arthur Goldberg to step down from his eminent position on the US Supreme Court was to rid the Court of a Jew.”

Continuing in my post, I wrote: “It’s a given that with all our advances, we still maintain the handmaiden status in the US. We are an appurtenance, an assistant, but never first place.... I struggle for answers as to why American society allows Jews to rise but quickly presses the ‘shutoff valve’ right before ascension to the highest levels of leadership. In Josh Shapiro we saw leadership, drive, charisma, and congeniality – all the qualities that... would have allowed him to break the glass ceiling.”

All things considered, because Trump’s campaign saw Shapiro as a potential threat to its electoral victory in November, Trump arrogantly derailed the fate of a potential Jewish candidate on the Democratic ticket. As a result, much of the Jewish community was awash with those all too familiar feelings of being pushed to the side – consigned to the status of “outsider” – never able to achieve inclusion in the traditionally coveted places that remain closed to Jews.

After all, in our 250-year history as a nation, a Jew has still never served as president or vice president. I know for certain, I was deeply wounded as a member of the Jewish community last week. And for that reason alone, I cannot forgive Trump. And how can any other Jew?

The writer, a PhD, is a sociologist, and an author/editor of 16 academic books. Her two most recent books, From Madness to Mutiny, second edition, and Moral Schisms, will be published by Oxford University Press. She resides in Fort Lee, New Jersey.