Former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday assailed President Biden for threatening to halt weapons supplies to Israel, and he repeatedly turned to castigating American Jews who support Mr. Biden, suggesting that they were betraying their religious and cultural identity.
Outside the Manhattan courtroom where he is on trial for charges related to a campaign sex scandal cover-up in 2016, Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden’s policy on Israel “disgraceful.” Then, he told reporters that “any Jewish person” who had voted for Mr. Biden “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Asked about Mr. Biden’s comments by a local television station in North Carolina, he instructed American Jews — a substantial majority of whom are liberal — not to vote for Mr. Biden in November. “If you’re Jewish, and you vote for him, I say, shame on you,” he told Spectrum News 1 North Carolina.
And in a video posted to social media in which he also invoked a rally and march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, where white supremacists carrying tiki torches chanted “Jews will not replace us,” Mr. Trump claimed that Mr. Biden hated “the Jewish people.” He added: “If Jewish people are going to vote for Joe Biden, they have to have their head examined.”
In recent months, Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized Jewish voters who backed Democrats as he has attacked Mr. Biden’s approach toward the war in Gaza, tried to present himself as a staunch pro-Israel ally and sought to use the conflict as a wedge issue that can chip away at Mr. Biden’s coalition. In the North Carolina interview, he voiced support for an Israeli invasion of Rafah, saying, “They have to get the job done.”
Mr. Trump has for years tried to woo Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party. But his efforts have accelerated since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the ensuing conflict in Gaza, which exposed divisions among Democrats over the Biden administration’s approach to Israel.
