Sen. J.D. Vance on Sunday defended former President Donald Trump for calling out Jews who plan to vote for President Biden.
“Do I think it’s reasonable to look at the situation and say that if you’re a Jewish American who cares about the state of Israel, who cares about these antisemitic riots and say, you should be on the side of Republicans in 2024, because they govern effectively on some of the issues that you care about? I think it’s a totally reasonable argument to make. And I think that Donald Trump‘s going to keep on making it,” Mr. Vance said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Mr. Vance, Ohio Republican who has been considered to be on Mr. Trump’s vice-president shortlist, said the former president “has actually been really good for the state of Israel.”
“We had peace and prosperity in our country and we had a very stalwart ally of the Israelis,” he said. “Now Joe Biden is President, Israelis have been attacked, you’ve got these terrible campus protests with a lot of antisemitic overtones all over our country, and you also have him trying to micromanage the Israeli response to them being attacked.”
Mr. Trump said Thursday that Jewish voters should be “ashamed” if they voted for Mr. Biden.
“What Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful,” he said as he walked into a Manhattan courtroom Thursday for his hush money trial. “If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves.”
“He’s totally abandoned Israel and nobody can believe it. I guess he feels good about it because he did it as a political decision,” Mr. Trump said. “You have to do the right decision, not the political decision.”
His comments come after Mr. Biden said Wednesday that he would pause shipment of weapons to Israel if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders another offensive against Hamas militants in the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
Asked about antisemitic undertones that Jewish Americans are considered Jews first over American citizens, Mr. Vance said Mr. Trump’s comment wasn’t singling out Jewish Americans.
“He singled out a lot of people for voting for Joe Biden, suggesting they’ve got to wake up and elect [Mr. Trump] as president in 2024. So I don’t think there’s any effort to single out Jewish Americans,” the senator said.
He said that just because Mr. Trump mentioned Jewish Americans in his comment doesn’t mean “he doesn’t think the same lessons apply to a whole host of American citizens.”
“He’s made similar comments about a lot of different groups of people,” Mr. Vance said. “I don’t think anybody could look at the presidency and the conduct of Donald Trump and say, ‘This is a person who’s somehow antisemitic.’”