Trump Vows To Be ‘Best Friend’ To Jewish Americans, As Allegations Of Ally’s Antisemitism Surface

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump on Thursday decried antisemitism hours after an explosive CNN report detailed how one in all his allies working for North Carolina governor made a sequence of racial and sexual feedback on an internet site the place he additionally referred to himself as a “black NAZI.”

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson vowed to stay within the race regardless of the report, and the Trump marketing campaign seemed to be distancing itself from the candidate whereas nonetheless calling the battleground state a significant half to successful again the White Home. Trump has continuously voiced his help for Robinson, who has been thought-about a rising star in his occasion regardless of a historical past of inflammatory remarks about race and abortion.

Trump didn’t touch upon the allegations throughout his Thursday addresses to a gaggle of Jewish donors and to the Israeli-American Council in Washington. His marketing campaign issued a press release concerning the CNN story that didn’t point out Robinson, saying as an alternative that Trump “is targeted on successful the White Home and saving this nation” and that North Carolina was a “important a part of that plan.”

Robinson’s reported remarks — together with a 2012 remark through which he stated he most well-liked Adolf Hitler to the management in Washington — clashed with Trump’s denunciations of antisemitism in Washington and his declare that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, sympathized with enemies of Israel. The story additionally may threaten Trump’s possibilities of successful North Carolina, a key battleground state, with Robinson already working properly behind his Democratic opponent in public polls.

“This story is just not concerning the governor’s race in North Carolina. It’s concerning the presidential race,” stated Paul Shumaker, a Republican pollster who’s labored for Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and warned that Trump may threat dropping a state he received in 2016 and 2020.

“The query goes to be, does Mark Robinson value Donald Trump the White Home?” Shumaker added.

After allegations in opposition to Robinson turned public, a spokesman for Harris’ marketing campaign, Ammar Moussa, reposted on social media a photograph of Trump and the embattled candidate. “Donald Trump has a Mark Robinson drawback,” he wrote.

The North Carolina Republican Celebration issued a press release standing by Robinson, noting he “categorically denied the allegations made by CNN however that received’t cease the Left from making an attempt to demonize him by way of private assaults.”

Trump has angled to make inroads amongst Black voters and continuously aligned himself with Robinson alongside the marketing campaign path, which has increasingly more continuously taken him to North Carolina. At a rally in Greensboro, he known as Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids” in reference to the civil rights chief, for his talking potential.

Robinson has been on the path with Trump as just lately as final month, when he appeared with the GOP nominee at an occasion in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Latest polls of North Carolina voters present Trump and Harris locked in an in depth race. The identical polls present Democrat Josh Stein with a roughly 10-point lead over Robinson.

Each Trump and Harris, the Democratic nominee, have been making appearances meant to fireplace up their core supporters, with Harris collaborating in a livestream with Oprah Winfrey.

Trump appeared Thursday with Miriam Adelson, a co-owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and widow of billionaire on line casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

“My promise to Jewish Individuals is that this: Together with your vote, I shall be your defender, your protector, and I would be the finest pal Jewish Individuals have ever had within the White Home,” Trump stated throughout the donor occasion in Washington, titled “Preventing Anti-Semitism in America.”

“However in all equity, I already am,” Trump added.

Trump additionally has been criticized for his affiliation with extremists who spew antisemitic rhetoric corresponding to far-right activist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, previously often called Kanye West. And when former Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke endorsed Trump in 2016, Trump responded in a CNN interview that he knew “nothing about David Duke, I do know nothing about white supremacists.”

However throughout his 4 years in workplace Trump accredited a sequence of coverage adjustments lengthy sought by many advocates of Israel, corresponding to shifting the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

In his remarks, Trump criticized Harris over the Biden administration’s dealing with of the Israel-Hamas conflict and for what he known as antisemitic protests on faculty campuses and elsewhere.

“Kamala Harris has achieved completely nothing. She has not lifted a single finger to guard you or to guard your kids,” Trump stated. He additionally repeated a speaking level that Jewish voters who vote for Democrats “ought to have their head examined.”

A number of attendees on the occasion stated they weren’t conversant in the story about Robinson or declined to debate it. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a conservative North Carolina Republican who was requested concerning the CNN report beforehand, advised reporters she wasn’t taking questions.

Later Thursday, Trump spoke on the Israeli-American Council Nationwide Summit to honor the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel and painted a dire future for the nation if Harris have been to be elected.

“Israel is not going to exist inside two years if she turns into president,” he advised the group, additionally including that if he loses the presidential election to her on Nov. 5 “the Jewish individuals would actually have quite a bit to do with that.”

Harris on Thursday confronted strain from components of her liberal base over the conflict. Leaders of the Democratic protest vote motion “Uncommitted” stated the group wouldn’t endorse Harris for president, but additionally urged supporters to vote in opposition to Trump. The group, which opposes the Biden administration’s dealing with of the Israel-Hamas conflict, has known as for a right away ceasefire in Gaza and an finish to U.S. weapons transfers to Israel.

“Uncommitted” drew a whole bunch of hundreds of votes on this 12 months’s Democratic primaries, surfacing a rift throughout the occasion. The group has warned that some Democratic voters could keep house in November, notably in locations like Michigan.

Harris’ marketing campaign didn’t immediately handle the group’s announcement, however stated in a press release that she is going to “proceed working to convey the conflict in Gaza to an finish in a method the place Israel is safe, the hostages are launched, the struggling in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian individuals can understand their proper to dignity, safety, freedom and self-determination.”

Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Related Press author Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.