\u201cI didn\u2019t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel,\u201d Donald Trump told the AIPAC conference Monday evening, before proceeding to do exactly that.<\/p>\n
In his unique rhetorical way, Trump ticked off every box on the AIPAC agenda, and then some. He also ticked off a number of rabbis and other delegates who condemned and protested his presence at the event. Trump\u2019s history of making statements that are sexist and racist, his sluggishness at disavowing the support of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klanners, his making fun of a disabled reporter and a litany of other offences convinced some AIPAC attendees that Trump should be either disinvited or boycotted.<\/p>\n
They were wrong, because this was an opportunity for Trump to clarify or otherwise explain his behaviors. Of course, he didn\u2019t, which was an opportunity missed. Trump came on \u2013 uncharacteristically \u2013 with a prepared text distributed in advance to media. What he read was a fulsome reversal of his statement just days earlier that he would be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s repeated invocation of the term \u201cbelieve me\u201d is almost a verbal tic and it belies a tendency to express the unbelievable.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody respects women more than I do,\u201d Trump told CNN Monday night. If we were to believe him, women would be among the only people Trump seems to respect. When any individual criticizes him, Trump lashes out with the most juvenile, personal and insulting terms, not least repeatedly referring to his fellow Republicans Cruz and Rubio as \u201cLying Ted\u201d and \u201cLittle Marco.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within days, Trump pivoted from \u201cneutrality\u201d to a no-holds-barred defence of Israel that would make Binyamin Netanyahu (whom Trump calls \u201cBibby\u201d) blush. The response he received from the AIPAC crowd verged on enthusiastic. Yet his conversion to Zionism may reflect little more than some good advice, a comparatively competent speechwriter and the ability to unabashedly pander.<\/p>\n
Trump promised to dismantle the nuclear deal with Iran and he trashed the United Nations. \u201cWhen I\u2019m president, believe me, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He condemned the Palestinian incitement of children to hate Israel and Jews. \u201cIn Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you\u2019ve got a culture of hatred that has been fomenting there for years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
In what amounted to his first significant expression of foreign policy, Trump waded in deep. He wants to reduce American commitments to NATO, specifically citing NATO\u2019s obligation to defend Ukraine. What he doesn\u2019t understand or doesn\u2019t care about is that the United States and Britain made a deal with Ukraine \u2013 then the world\u2019s third-largest nuclear power \u2013 to eliminate its arsenal in exchange for a promise of protection. Global reaction to Russian aggression betrayed that promise and Trump wants to rub salt in the wound.<\/p>\n
This is an example of Trump\u2019s lack of awareness on international affairs. Yet it is unlikely to hurt him with supporters, who forgive his every error and offence and who sometimes seem to idealize a world free of non-Americans.<\/p>\n
On CNN after the speech, Trump was asked about the expressions of support he has received from neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klanners and antisemites. \u201cI don\u2019t want their support,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cI don\u2019t need their support.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump is indeed creaming his opponents in the primaries, and it may be a minor rhetorical thing, but would he take their support if he did<\/em> need it?<\/p>\n Asked by Wolf Blitzer whether he would condemn violence by his supporters, Trump replied, \u201cOf course I would, 100%, but \u2026 I have no control over the people.\u201d Then he went on to note that \u201cthese people\u201d have been disenfranchised \u2013 they lost their jobs and earn less money now than they did 12 years ago, as though this justified violence.<\/p>\n Had Trump\u2019s AIPAC speech occurred in a vacuum \u2013 if he had just landed from the proverbial Mars and not for months been spouting hatred toward Muslims, Mexicans, women and anyone who opposes him \u2013 the speech might have deserved the applause it received.<\/p>\n Instead, his words were diametrically opposed to what he has said in the past and, even if they weren\u2019t, they are coming from an individual who has done egregious harm to social relations and human decency in public discourse. Even if Trump said everything Jewish people and other friends of Israel wanted to hear, this would not detract from the other things he has said and the other people \u2013 including every Muslim in the world \u2013 he has deliberately and maliciously affronted.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to be great for Israel,\u201d Trump declared, and maybe he would be. But at what cost to the social fabric of his country and the place of the United States in the world?<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I say something, I mean it, I mean it,\u201d he crowed, despite his blatant reversals. \u201cBelieve me, believe me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI didn\u2019t come here tonight to pander to you about Israel,\u201d Donald Trump told the AIPAC conference Monday evening, before proceeding to do exactly that. In his unique rhetorical way, Trump ticked off every box on the AIPAC agenda, and then some. He also ticked off a number of rabbis and other delegates who condemned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1034,3249,4330,5080],"class_list":["post-17880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-aipac","tag-elections","tag-israel","tag-trump"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}