Trump Playing with Fire

Donald Trump’s loyalists might defend his appointments of Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Robert Kennedy, Jr. by pointing out that only a small percentage of his Cabinet nominees to date have publicly engaged in ugly and odious antisemitic behavior. They are more likely to argue that his selections of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as Secretary of State, Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as U.N. Ambassador and Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel reinforce the president-elect’s uncompromising support for the Jewish state. 

But that isn’t nearly good enough, even for ardent Trump devotees. Gaetz and Kennedy must go.

There are countless reasons for Gaetz not to be confirmed. But if the accusations of his sexual misconduct against a 17-year-old and his ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 election are insufficient, his extensive history of antisemitic comments and conduct should convince even the most committed MAGA-ites to oppose him.

While trying to defeat legislation that would strengthen protections against antisemitic discrimination, Gaetz articulated his belief that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. He invited Holocaust denier Charles Johnson as his guest to the State of the Union address, defended his colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene for comparing anti-COVID measures to the Holocaust and attacked the Anti-Defamation League as “racist” for their criticism of talk show host Tucker Carlson.

Similarly, there is no shortage of essential reasons for opposing Kennedy’s nomination as Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. But along with Kennedy’s opposition to vaccines, fluoride and science, he also has a repugnant history of unacceptable comments about the Jewish people. He has suggested that COVID had been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews (and the Chinese) and somehow invoked Anne Frank’s ordeal to suggest that Nazi Germany provided more favorable treatment to its citizens than the U.S. during the pandemic. Opposing these nominations does not make one any more anti-Republican than criticizing Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) or Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) makes one anti-Democrat. But the prospect of either man serving in a president’s Cabinet represents a direct threat to the American Jewish community by rewarding beliefs and behavior that should long ago have been eradicated.

The prospect of either man serving in a president’s Cabinet represents a direct threat to the American Jewish community by rewarding beliefs and behavior that should long ago have been eradicated.

The fact that virulent and resurgent antisemitism threatens us from both extremes of the political spectrum is nothing new. But since the Hamas attack on Israel, the resulting political debate in this country has made that threat both omnipresent and inescapable. For most of that time, even while acknowledging the potential harm we face from both ultra-conservative nationalists and far-left Israel-haters, I’ll acknowledge that I have spent much more time in this column reflecting on the split within the Democratic Party on these issues than on the menace that Republicans face on their most right-leaning fringe. 

That’s not because of any past or current partisan preferences on my part (I have been a registered independent for many years), but rather because the progressive anger toward Israel has posed a much greater challenge for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris than the blood-and-soil bigots represented within the GOP. In the context of the just-concluded presidential campaign, the divisions on the left over the Gaza War were simply far more relevant to the election’s outcome than similar anger and hate among extreme conservative antisemites.

But now the election is over and the potential impact of antisemitism from the right has become much greater. Those progressives who allowed their animosity toward Israel to ooze into similar intolerance for Jews are just as contemptible as ever, of course. But their impact on the national political landscape has been diminished, at least for now.

Unfortunately, there is more than enough hatred and prejudice to go around. Just as a presidential election taking place simultaneously with the Gaza War reminded us that antisemitism remains a pernicious threat from the left, Trump’s recent appointments make it equally difficult to forget that the challenge we face is still a multi-front battle. And in the first days since his election, he seems determined to make sure that his administration will be stocked with more than enough bigots whose public disparagement of Jews should make them unacceptable for any public office.

Dan Schnur is the U.S. Politics Editor for the Jewish Journal. He teaches courses in politics, communications, and leadership at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. He hosts the monthly webinar “The Dan Schnur Political Report” for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Follow Dan’s work at www.danschnurpolitics.com.