On Monday, former President Donald Trump accused Jews who vote for Democrats of hating Israel and their own religion, to boot. The comments were made, ironically, to MAGA ally Sebastian Gorka, a figure with ties to Nazi-linked parties in his native Hungary. Other than the fact that Trump loves to drag Jewish Americans (7 out of 10 of whom didn’t vote for him in 2020), it’s hard to understand what he hoped to gain from this latest outburst.
Other than the fact that Trump loves to drag Jewish Americans, it’s hard to understand what he hoped to gain from this latest outburst.
Admittedly, there is often a base cunning to even Trump’s most unhinged rants. To read his recent remarks strategically — as opposed to morally — is to consider the possibility that Trump is pursuing that most rare and peculiar of birds: the Jewish American swing voter. Another possibility is that, as always, he’s trying to tear groups asunder. For Trump, divisiveness is the point, divisiveness is the goal, and divisiveness is the strategy.
As for Jewish “undecideds,” a phrase that strikes me — as a Jewish person — as an oxymoron, it just might be that Trump and his people sense a post-Oct. 7 wedge to exploit. Maybe they believe that some of the 70% of Jews who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 are MAGA-curious. These Members of the Tribe, according to this theory, believe Biden isn’t supportive enough of Israel.
It’s also plausible that the Gorka interview was directed not at Jews at all but at Trump’s base of white conservative evangelical Christians who share his support for Israel’s hard-right government. The notion of Jews as bad, fallen, misguided and in need of salvation is quite congenial to this evangelical worldview (and evangelicals don’t restrict that judgment to a mere 70% of Jews!).
One might also surmise that Trump has his eye on a tiny but influential sliver of conservative Jewish lobbying groups, PACS and major donors who support Israel’s hard-right government.
If it’s the case that he is actually courting Jewish voters who’ve recently soured on Biden, then Trump sure has landed upon a strange strategy to win them over. In Trump’s mind, these disgruntled Jewish voters simply need to be told that they’re bad, self-hating Jews by him, a former president who has more than a passing fondness for, and support from, fascist and neo-Nazi groups. Yeah, that ought to bring them around!
Factor in that Jews, as voters, play a nugatory role in presidential elections, and once again it’s hard to discern the rationale for Trump’s provocations. The states with the largest Jewish populations percentage-wise (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, California) are solidly blue. Picking off a few Jews who are disappointed in Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in these Democratic enclaves would have zero effect on the Electoral College.
If Trump’s “appeals” will have little impact on Jewish swing voters, and if Jewish swing voters aren’t that important in a presidential election anyhow, then what rationale can we derive for his remarks? One way to think of this is that the MAGA movement believes it gains traction by sowing division within groups.
Obliterate the center, bludgeon all nuances, try to force people to choose one simplistically framed side or another in accord with whatever position Trump favors on that particular day — this is a well-known formulation in the MAGA playbook. We’ve seen this cynical and strategic divisiveness used to herd so-called RINOs out of the GOP. It has been deployed to suggest that Blacks and Latinos who don’t support Trump’s policies are traitors to their own people. With Jewish Americans, Trump has cannily identified pre-existing tensions, and he’s trying to exacerbate them to the hilt. With Jewish Americans, Trump has cannily identified pre-existing tensions, and he’s trying to exacerbate them to the hilt. Prior to MAGA, there were disagreements among American Jews about who was and who wasn’t a Jew according to Halakha, or traditional Jewish law. Jews often disagreed among themselves about domestic issues from affirmative action to tax policies to whether liberalism or conservatism best served the community’s interests. And, of course, they argued among themselves about American foreign policy toward Israel and the question of settlements in particular. Before Trump’s rise, a significant generational fissure was becoming evident: Younger Jews were growing increasingly critical of, and exasperated by, the hard-right policies of the Netanyahu government. However, these disagreements were expressed mostly cordially in public, far less so in spaces where Jews spoke privately to one another. To repeat, these tensions always existed in the community. What was missing, of course, was a national political figure stoking as much division as possible. Having a head of state — a gentile, no less — publicly calling the majority of American Jews “disloyal” or self-hating or misinformed, this was something completely unprecedented. In this new dispensation, Jews can pounce upon one another on X and the op-ed pages, their debates and kvetching for all to behold. While I don’t think it wins Trump many new votes per se, the tactic of calling out Jews does have a perverse and sinister logic. To exacerbate long-standing divisions within groups is to attempt to bring into being the reality of a broken, angry America that Donald Trump has himself defined. The divisiveness is the point, the fissure that he says he alone can mend.
Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. 
