President Donald Trump on Wednesday launched into a bizarre attack on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — the highest-ranking Jewish person in the American government — by inexplicably claiming that the New York Democrat was no longer Jewish during a marathon media availability alongside Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin.
Trump was speaking to reporters in the Oval Office about his plans for tax cuts when he suddenly pivoted to recounting how, in his view, Democrats hadn’t stood and applauded sufficiently at different parts of the speech he delivered to a joint session of Congress last week.
“We are planning to lower taxes ... if the Democrats behave, but the Democrats have no clue — you saw that the other night during the speech,” he said. “That evening was a disaster for the Democrats, in my opinion.”
Trump accused Democrats of not reacting approvingly enough of a young cancer survivor who was made an honorary Secret Service special agent during his speech and called the party “sick.”
“They don't know what's happening in the real world, the Democrats have to get their act together, and if they don't vote, then what you're going to do is you're going to have taxes that are going to go through the roof. You're going to have a very bad time. You're going to have some very bad things happen, and people are going to blame the Democrats,” he said.
But the president, for no apparent reason, then pivoted to attacking the background of Schumer, a fellow New Yorker and a longtime foil during his decade-long political career.
“And Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I'm concerned. You know, he's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian,” he said before complaining about a question from a NBC correspondent and continuing with his meandering remarks.
Schumer, a 74-year-old veteran of the upper chamber who has served as the Democratic floor leader since 2017, is not Palestinian. He was born in Brooklyn and has lived in New York for his entire life.
Yet the president has repeatedly attacked the Senate leader’s background and accused him of being “Palestinian” as if to redefine that ethnicity as an insult.
At an August 2024 campaign rally, he said Schumer was “a proud member of Hamas,” the anti-Israel terrorist group, after the New Yorker declined to shake the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the controversial Israeli leader addressed Congress during a joint session last summer.
Speaking in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Trump told supporters: “Chuck Schumer refused to shake the Israeli prime minister’s hand ... Chuck Schumer has become a Palestinian. Can you believe it? He’s become a proud member of Hamas.”
He repeated the false claim about Schumer’s background in a Truth Social post last month when he said that Palestinians — who he called “people like Chuck Schumer” — would “actually have a chance to be happy, safe, and free” under his plan for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse the existing population so the territory could be redeveloped.
Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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