The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), representing 2,000 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy, on Monday called upon former President Donald Trump to repudiate the anti-Semitic rhetoric of two leading purveyors of anti-Semitism, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, after Trump met with them at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Endorsing comments made by the Hon. David Friedman, former United States ambassador to Israel, CJV urged Mr. Trump to recognize that “You are better than this.”
“A former president does not enjoy the luxury of meeting over dinner with any oddball,” said CJV Vice President Rabbi Dov Fischer, “especially when that fool is a self-declared hater. It was wrong for former President Obama to affiliate with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan. It is wrong for President Biden to praise Jew-hater Rashida Tlaib and fail to exert his leadership to rein in the Jew-hatred of Ilhan Omar. And it is wrong when President Trump breaks bread with such individuals.”
Early last month, West announced that he would go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” Twitter removed his hateful tweet, and over a dozen companies with which West was working cut ties after West refused to apologize or rescind his remarks. News reports confirm that President Trump did not know who Nick Fuentes was when Kanye West brought him to the meeting, but CJV underscored that West himself should not have been admitted without clear repudiation of his own anti-Semitic statements.
“It’s contradictory that former President Trump, who has done so much for the State of Israel and for the Jewish community, would meet with someone who has expressed open hostility against the Jewish people,” said CJV Southern Regional Vice President Rabbi Moshe B. Parnes, who leads an advanced rabbinical seminary less than an hour from Mar-a-Lago. “Trump should have condemned West’s anti-Semitism before the meeting, and repeated it at the meeting, so it is past due for him to speak out. As he said himself when he introduced his Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism, ‘The vile, hate-filled poison of anti-Semitism must be condemned and confronted everywhere and anywhere it appears.’”