Buried in his efforts to convince a sympathetic audience that he deserved to return to the White House, Donald Trump made an important admission about a long-standing frustration.
“With all I have done for Israel,” he said at a campaign event ostensibly centered on antisemitism, “I received only 24 percent of the Jewish vote. Now think of this. I really haven’t been treated very well, but that’s the story of my life.”
Indeed it is.
In Trump’s estimation, he deserves both credit and unwavering support from Jewish Americans because of the things he did on Israel’s behalf as president. He said as much at the event.
“I said, I’m the best friend they ever had. And still in 2020 — so remember, I got 24, 25 percent [of the Jewish vote in 2016]. Now, I did all of these things and I got 29 percent,” Trump complained. “Think of it. So I wasn’t treated right. But it’s not me that’s been treated badly. It’s Israel.”
This is a recurring theme of Trump’s politics. Making his pitch to skeptical constituencies, he cobbles together accomplishments that he then promotes as exceptional, as the pinnacle of what those groups might have wanted. Black Americans want opportunity zones. Jewish people want the American Embassy to be in Jerusalem. He delivered on these things — but they still don’t love him? How can that be?
The answer, consistently, is that what Trump delivers isn’t necessarily what those constituencies seek. A few months after the 2020 election, Pew Research Center published research showing the gap between Trump’s presentation of his accomplishments and how Jewish Americans viewed them. Most Jewish Americans gave him credit for being friendly to Israel, yes. But a plurality saw him as unfriendly to them. A majority indicated that his handling of Israel policy was fair or poor, contrary to Trump’s apparent belief.
Trump’s exposure to the interests and desires of Jewish Americans is largely centered among conservative and right-wing Jewish people, a minority of the American Jewish population. He tends to conflate Jewish interests with Israeli interests, often explicitly.
He did so at another point in his comments.
“You have to defeat Kamala Harris more than any other people on Earth. Israel, I believe, has to defeat her,” Trump told the audience. “You know that? And I’ve never said this before, I’m thinking, Miriam” — referring to his ally and donor Miriam Adelson — “more than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her.”
What attracted the most attention in his comments, though, was Trump’s claim that the 2024 presidential contest depended on Jewish voters.
“After having done all of that, having been the best president, the greatest president by far, by far — a poll just came out; I’m at 40 percent,” Trump said. “That means you got 60 percent voting for somebody that hates Israel. And, I say it. … It’s only because of the Democrat hold or curse on you. You can’t let this happen.”
A recent Pew poll showed Trump trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by a nearly 2 to 1 margin among Jewish voters.
“I’m not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” he added a bit later. “If I’m at 40 percent? Think of it, that means 60 percent are voting for Kamala who in particular is a bad Democrat.”
This is a ridiculous assertion. PRRI’s recent assessment of the religious composition of the country finds that only about 2 percent of the U.S. is Jewish. What’s more, the Jewish population is heavily centered in states that will not determine the outcome of the election: New York, New Jersey, Florida and California.
PRRI created estimates of the religious composition of each county in the country. In the seven swing states that are likely to determine the outcome of the election, the Jewish population makes up an even smaller percentage of the population, maybe a bit over 1 percent. There are probably fewer Jewish people living in Michigan than the margin of Trump’s loss there in 2020, for example.
It is the case that counties with a larger percentage of Jewish residents tend to vote more heavily Democratic. The counties with the highest percentages of Jewish residents backed Biden by about 27 points in 2020.
We should remember, though, that Trump’s view of the overlap between politics and religion is driven less by conservative Jewish allies than White evangelical Protestants. At the Thursday event, Trump touted the extent to which many religious conservatives value Israel.
“You have a lot of good Christians there that love Israel, by the way,” he said. “In many ways, they love Israel more than Jewish people of Israel, which is shocking, but nevertheless, we’ll take it, right?”
This is often because conservative Christians view Israel as an essential element in the second coming of Christ. It is not always because of an abundance of sympathy for Jewish people there or in the U.S.
Trump’s political base is far more heavily rooted in the evangelical vote than the Democrats’ are in Jewish voters. In the counties with the highest percentages of evangelical residents, according to PRRI, Trump won in 2020 by 64 points. About a third of all of his votes came from evangelical voters.
Notice that the vertical axes on those charts differ. Here’s how the densities of Jewish and evangelical residents compares — or, really, doesn’t compare at all.
To suggest that any loss will be a function of the 2 percent of Americans who are Jewish — or the just over 1 percent of swing-state voters who are — is to present Jewish Americans as wielding disproportionate power over American politics. It suggests that Jewish Americans have some sort of control over systems that is detached from reality.
It is, in essence, exactly the sort of rhetoric about Jewish people that is at the heart of many antisemitic arguments. The sort of rhetoric echoed by people like Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina. Robinson was revealed earlier Thursday to have literally referred to himself as a “black Nazi” at one point in the past. This development was not mentioned at the “antisemitism” event, nor has Trump rescinded his fawning endorsement of Robinson’s candidacy.
To observers who aren’t Donald Trump, it is easy to determine a reason that Jewish Americans might not view him as a robust ally.