Trump’s Jewish Outreach Point Man Makes His Pitch

Boris Epshteyn, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and co-chair of Jewish Voices for Trump, shared the Trump campaign’s pitch to the Jewish community in a phone interview with the Journal on October 28.

Epshteyn began the interview by stating that he felt “very optimistic” about Trump’s reelection chances on November 3 because “the polls are all going our way across the country.” He touted Trump as “the champion of the Jewish community” and “the champion of the state of Israel.

“Everything he has done for our greatest ally, Israel, in terms of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, killing the terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani, ripping up the terrible, no good Iran nuclear deal, getting the Abraham Accords signed, which have now moved three Arab countries toward Israel and away from Iran ­— so major and so groundbreaking,” Epshteyn said. “This president has been a huge, huge champion of the state of Israel.”

He also said that Trump “has fought anti-Semitism anywhere and everywhere,” citing the executive order Trump signed in December 2019 applying Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to anti-Semitism, thus allowing federal agencies to combat anti-Semitism. Additionally, Epshteyn pointed to Trump signing the Never Again Education Act, which provided more federal funding toward Holocaust education, and the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today (JUST) Act, which mandates that the State Department provide annual reports on the  47 countries that pledged in 2009 to provide restitution for Holocaust survivors and their descendants who had their property stolen by the Nazis.

“You compare that to Joe Biden, who met with Jacob Blake Sr., an avowed and rabid anti-Semite,” Epshteyn said. “Kamala Harris met with Jacob Blake Sr. the anti-Semite and said that he was a member of an incredible family. They had Linda Sarsour speak at their national convention. They demean the Holocaust by ludicrously comparing Donald Trump to the terrible, no-good, disgusting Joseph Goebbels.”

Jacob Blake Sr. is the father of Jacob Blake, who was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August and is paralyzed from the waist down as a result. Biden and Harris met with Jacob Blake Sr. following the shooting, with Biden saying in a Twitter video that he told Blake Sr. and his family that “justice must and will be done.” Among Blake Sr.’s past remarks that came under scrutiny include Facebook posts expressing support for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and posts about the “Jewish-controlled media.”

As for Sarsour, she spoke during the Democratic National Convention’s Muslim Delegates and Allies Assembly’s virtual panel; a spokesperson for the Biden campaign subsequently condemned Sarsour and said “she has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.” A few days later, Middle East Eye reported that the Biden campaign apologized to Arab and Muslim activists in an off-the-record phone call for “‘the pain’ that the campaign had caused to Arabs and Muslims by disavowing Sarsour.” Biden senior adviser Symone Sanders claimed that the campaign was merely affirming “Biden’s unshakeable commitment to working with Arab, Palestinian and Muslim Americans and to make clear that we regretted any hurt that was caused to these communities. We continue to reject the views that Linda Sarsour has expressed.”

The “Goebbels” remark is a reference to Biden saying in September that Trump is “sort of like [Nazi propagandist] Joseph Goebbels,” arguing, “You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge.”

When the Journal asked Epshteyn on why polls have shown that 70-75% of American Jewish voters say they’re going to vote for Biden over Trump, Epshteyn pointed to a September poll from the Jewish Electorate Institute finding that 67% of American Jews plan to vote for Biden and 30% plan to vote for Trump. The 67% would be the lowest percentage of the Jewish vote for a Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988 and the 30% figure is 5% higher than what Trump received in 2016, Epshteyn argued. Biden currently has an estimated 7.4 point-lead in the RealClearPolitics national polling averages.

“There’s no doubt that the Jewish vote is moving toward President Trump and it’s going to continue to do so,” he said.

Regarding Trump’s infamous “very fine people on both sides” comments following the 2017 neo-Nazi riots in Charlottesville, Epshteyn argued that Trump’s remarks were taken out of context.

“What he was saying about fine people was that on the question of Confederate monuments, there’s fine people on both sides of that argument, which has been an argument and a discussion going on for years,” Epshteyn said. “This president has repeatedly and unequivocally condemned anti-Semitism and white supremacy.”

If Trump were to win re-election, the administration would continue its efforts to combat anti-Semitism and support Israel, Epshteyn said, pointing to New York University’s settlement with the Department of Education on September 15, which requires that the university adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

“You will continue to see a major focus on that internationally,” Epshteyn said.

Additionally, he said that more Arab countries would form peace agreements with Israel under a second Trump term.

Epshteyn stated that while there are anti-Semites in both the far-left and the far-right, Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) show that only the far-left gets elected to Congress.

“When Steve King, who is a Republican congressman who has said disgusting things, he was ostracized and taken off all committees by Republican leader of the House Kevin McCarthy,” Epshteyn said. “When Ilhan Omar says that Jews in Israel have hypnotized the world and ‘it’s all about the Benjamins,’ there’s a completely watered down resolution that doesn’t even mention her anti-Semitism barely, and she gets to stay on the House Foreign Affairs committee, which oversees relations between the U.S. and Israel.”

He also argued that Jews are being targeted under New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo — both of whom are Democrats — and the latter is reportedly being considered for attorney general in a Biden administration.

“That is what Jews will have to fear [under a Biden administration]: the continuation of targeting of Jews by the far-left radical anti-Semitic Democrats,” Epshteyn said.