Trump Calls Democrats 'Anti-Jewish' for Bipartisan Resolution

Donald Trump called Democrats “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish” after the House passed a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and bigotry against Muslims that was opposed only by 23 members of the president’s own party.

Trump called the resolution, passed Thursday by a vote of 407-23, “a disgrace.” It was crafted by Democratic leaders to address remarks by Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, that have been criticized as anti-Semitic even by members of her own party. The resolution didn’t mention Omar by name.

“If you get an honest answer from politicians, they thought it was a disgrace,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Friday to visit tornado-ravaged Alabama. “The Democrats have become an anti-Israel party, they’ve become an anti-Jewish party, and that’s too bad.”

All House Democrats voted for the resolution, including Omar. While most House Republicans also voted for it, 23 voted no. Iowa’s Steve King voted present. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-ranking House Republican, called the resolution “a sham put forward by Democrats to avoid condemning one of their own” in a statement after voting against it.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Omar and has said she should resign from Congress. He has never criticized King, who was stripped of his committee assignments by his party leaders this year after questioning in a New York Times interview why the principles of white supremacy are considered offensive.

And Trump has never apologized for remarks he made following a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, where participants carried torches and shouted anti-Semitic slogans such as “Jews will not replace us.” One counter-protester was killed in a fracas with the white supremacists.

Afterward, Trump condemned “violence on many sides, on many sides” in the rally said that there were “some very bad people in that group” but that “you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”