The media claim that President Donald Trump — who bombed Iran’s nuclear sites and is busy deporting antisemitic foreign students — used an antisemitic slur in a speech Thursday when he referred to “shylocks.”
Trump used the term in a speech to supporters in Iowa following the passage Thursday of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” in the House of Representatives. The context was the bill’s increase in the amount of inheritance that is excluded from the federal estate tax, also known as the “death tax,” which affects some family farms.
Trump said:
And very importantly for Iowa, this bill rescues over two million family farms from the so-called estate tax or the death tax. In other words, before Trump, you were losing farms to the banks. Before Trump, you were losing the farms like nobody’s ever seen before. You love your children. You don’t feel so well. You pass away. You leave everything to your children, and they have to pay a big estate tax, or a “death tax” as we call it, and they couldn’t do it. They go out and borrow money and all of a sudden the bank is foreclosing on the farm. Not going to happen. You have no more estate tax. You have no more death tax to pay. Now, that’s if you love your children. If you don’t love your children, it doesn’t matter. Just forget about what I said. It’s not going to help you. But if you love them or if you love somebody that you’re leaving it to, think of that. No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from, in some cases, a fine banker and in some cases shylocks and bad people. But they took away a lot of lot of family — they destroyed a lot of families. But we did the opposite. So just remember — to me, it’s so important.
The term “shylocks” appears to be a reference to the character of Shylock in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, a Jew who is also a vengeful moneylender. The play is controversial, and some consider the character an antisemitic stereotype — though the play also expresses empathy for Jews, in some passages.
Trump was being facetious — “if you don’t love your children” — but is nonetheless being accused by the mainstream media of antisemitism, or rather the use of antisemitic “tropes.”
Trump claimed he was unaware of the antisemitic connotations of the term.
The accusations are familiar, following a pattern that was established ten years ago, when Trump was accused of vulgarity for using the term “schlonged” to describe Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary.
“Schlong” is a pejorative Yiddish word for “penis.”
Critics suggested that then-candidate Trump was not only being misogynistic, but also that he harbored a deep-seated antisemitism that would be reflected in his policies.
Since then, Trump has moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; and, most recently, bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, helping Israel win the 12 Day War.
Moreover, the Trump administration is currently pulling federal funding from universities that have shown tolerance toward antisemitism, and is deporting foreign students who have organized antisemitic protests.
Many people use terms that have pejorative origins without knowing their roots — such as the use of the term “gypped” to refer to swindling, which has its origins in the word “Gypsy,” and is a reference to the persecuted Roma people.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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