Trump just promoted himself as the “King of Israel” by quoting evangelical radio host

President Trump took to Twitter this morning to do damage control for his repugnant anti-Semitic comments in the Oval Office yesterday and somehow managed to dig himself even deeper into the hole.

During a press conference, President Trump employed an obvious anti-Semitic trope when he accused the 80% of American Jews who vote Democrat of being “ignorant” and “great disloyalty.”

This kind of talk is pretty common among far-right wing Jewish commentators, but considering that the President is not Jewish, openly spouts white supremacist rhetoric, and has helped provoke at least two massacres at Jewish synagogues, it goes without saying that Donald Trump is not qualified to levy any kind of judgment on American Jews.

Instead of apologizing or admitting any wrongdoing, the President tried to play his “the Jews? They love me” card by quoting a conspiracy theorist radio host from Nevada, Wayne Allen Root, who called him the “King of Israel” and said that “Jews love him like the Second Coming of God.”

This is, of course, horrendously offensive, not to mention completely delusional. It’s not even clear if Root should be speaking for Jews at all, since he calls himself a “Jew turned evangelical Christian” and has said that he thinks Trump is “the first Jewish president.”

Root is a complete crank and fundamentalist nutjob who is a strong proponent of the ideas that President Obama was not born in the United States, that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by Hillary Clinton, that the murder of Heather Heyer was committed by “Soros activists” and that the Las Vegas massacre was, in fact, a Muslim terror attack.

It goes without saying that for the President of the United States to promote such an absolute whack job on his public Twitter account is horrendous in and of itself; to do so to feed his ego and tickle his personal messianic complex in response to criticism over blatantly anti-Semitic remarks is simply beyond the pale.

Of course, you can expect all the Republicans who have been howling “anti-Semitism!” at Rep. Ilhan Omar for the past three months to say not one word about this, because nothing matters anymore but pure partisan spite.

Colin Taylor

Managing Editor

Colin Taylor is the managing editor of the Washington Press. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice, equality, and universal health care in America.