President Donald Trump on Tuesday decried anti-Semitic threats against Jewish community centers and promised to work to bridge divisions in the country.
‘The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful,’ Trump said in remarks after visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.
They are ‘a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,’ the president added, having told a reporter earlier that anti-Semitism must stop.
At a press conference last week Trump failed to speak out forcefully against anti-Semitism and community center bomb threats.
He instead went after the reporter who asked the question, telling him to be ‘quiet’ when he tried to interject, and declared himself the ‘least anti-Semitic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life.’
Trump told MSNBC’s Craig Melvin in a one-on-one before his Tuesday speech that he ‘of course’ denounces anti-Semitism and does so ‘whenever I get a chance.’
‘I do all the time. And I think it’s terrible. I think it’s horrible, whether its anti-Semitism or racism or anything you want to think about having to do with the divide,’ he said. ‘Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s gonna stop. And it has to stop.’
At the weekend, more than 100 headstones were damaged at a Jewish cemetery in St Louis, Missouri, the facility’s director said.
Nearly a dozen Jewish community centers received bomb threats that prompted evacuations on Monday. All of the threats turned out to be hoaxes.
The FBI and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division are said to be investigating those incidents, and dozens more reported since the start of the year.
‘This tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms,’ Trump today said.
While Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism, denounced the threats over the weekend, saying on Twitter that ‘we must protect our houses of worship & religious centers,’ the president had not commented.
Following his museum visit, Trump also pledged ‘to do everything I can to continue that promise of freedom for African-Americans and for every American.’
Accompanied by Ben Carson, the African American retired neurosurgeon he tapped to head the department of Housing and Urban Development, Trump praised the museum’s work honoring ‘African American men and women who built our national heritage.’
But it also was clearly intended to assuage concerns raised over Trump’s embrace by white supremacist groups and an ‘alt-right’ movement given a platform on Breitbart, the online news outlet once headed by Trump’s chief White House strategist Steve Bannon.
The White House raised eyebrows on International Holocaust Remembrance Day late last month by issuing a statement that made no mention of the six million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide.
When an Orthodox Jewish reporter asked Trump at a White House news conference about a post-election surge in anti-Semitic incidents in America, Trump reacted defensively, telling his questioner to ‘sit down.’
As he toured the museum, he was asked by Melvin whether he would clear up the confusion by denouncing anti-Semitism, Trump said, ‘I do all the time.’
‘You don’t know where it’s coming from but I certainly hope they catch the people,’ he said.
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