1 day ago
31
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
President Trump has cut federal funding for universities, arguing that they are bastions of antisemitism. His administration has stripped the visas of people who have participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. And he has directed agency leaders to look for all available means to fight antisemitism.
Trump points to all of this as evidence that he has made countering antisemitism a priority like no president ever has before. Yet when it comes to using the bully pulpit, Trump has been surprisingly slow, or conspicuously quiet, in responding to a string of high-profile attacks against American Jews.
In a social-media post on Monday afternoon, Trump condemned Sunday’s attack in Boulder, Colo., where witnesses said a man threw two Molotov cocktails at people attending a peaceful march in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza, wounding at least 12. The man, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was charged with a federal hate crime after he said he wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” according to court filings.
But Trump’s post made no mention of Jews or antisemitism. He pinned blame for the attack on former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies and said it was a reminder of “why we must keep our borders SECURE.” (Soliman, who emigrated from Egypt, had overstayed his visa and applied for asylum, officials at the Department of Homeland Security said.) Stephen Miller, a deputy White House chief of staff, also made no mention of antisemitism in his posts on social media about the attack, focusing only on the suspect’s immigration status.
Many Trump critics argue that the president seems more comfortable combating antisemitism when it dovetails with his broader political objectives — targeting elite universities, cracking down on immigration or fighting with political opponents — than when it involves physically protecting Jews.
“People are rightly noting that Republicans as a whole are willing to use antisemitism as an excuse to create division, beat up on Democrats,” said Representative Brad Schneider, a Democrat of Illinois and co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus.
