Thread by @sarahposner

1. Trump and Jews. A thread.

"Trump is frustrated" that more Jews won't vote for him is what an unnamed former/current WH official or a Trump advisor tells a reporter. It's not the real reason why Trump is acting this way.

washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…

2. Trump wants to divide people. This is not about Trump being "transactional" (i.e., hoping move of US Embassy to Jerusalem will make more American Jews love him in exchange). It's about Trump wanting to divide the "disloyal" from the "loyal," to pit people against each other.

3. Who is loyal? Well, a minority of American Jews for whom actions like the embassy move and Trump's tightness with Bibi are a plus, or at least sufficient to overcome Trump's negatives. And the evangelicals, Trump's most dedicated voting bloc.

4. The article implies Trump is mad bc his embassy and other "pro-Israel" moves thrilled evangelicals, but Democratic Jews were insufficiently grateful. But if Trump was truly acting transactional, he wouldn't demean those Jews, but think of other ways to earn their support.

5. Instead, he's pitting people against each other: Christian Zionists together with the right-wing Jews who support him, against the entirety of the Democratic Party, which he falsely portrays as pro-BDS, represented entirely by Tlaib, Omar, who he has spent weeks demonizing.

6. On the "good" side are people who "support" Israel. On the "evil" side are people who "hate" Israel--in Trump's framing, Democrats, and in particular, "disloyal" Jews who are Democrats.

This is not "transactional." This is othering, scapegoating, targeting. Dangerous stuff.

7. In the context of the white nationalist terrorism we've seen of late, it's tempting to classify Trump's use of classic anti-Semitic tropes ("disloyal") as a sop to white nationalists. But something different is going on here.

8. Trump is perpetrating a trope that Democratic Jews are insufficiently loyal to *Israel*--and white nationalists are hardly fans of Israel, and despise how Trump is too solicitous to Israel.

9. Here he is implicitly contrasting Democratic Jews' supposedly insufficient support of Israel with that of his evangelical base--making the evangelical support of Israel the baseline to measure someone's loyalty to Israel.

10. That is, are you a good Jew? Do you love Israel as much as the evangelicals do?

Trump doesn't care if these Jews vote for him (if he did, he sure has a strange way of showing it). He just wants to pit people against each other.

11. There is this, to be sure. But most of Trump's prominent evangelical backers claim to love the Jews, and love Israel.

washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/…

12. It's that ideology that Trump has taken in order to divide Americans: that "loving" Israel is the measure of your "loyalty" as a Jew; if you love Israel you are like the evangelicals who love Trump; if not you are like his targets Tlaib and Omar.