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Donald, about that Shylock remark... [1]

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Date: 2025-07-04

Here's what Trump said yesterday at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. He was talking about the estate tax, or as he also called it, the death tax. He was talking about what happens to the children of farmers, when the farmer passes away. They need to go to a bank to be able to deal with the estate tax and then all of a sudden, the bank is foreclosing on the farm. Trump wants to get rid of the estate tax. What he really means is that he wants rich people's estates to not have to pay any. He was using talking about the farmers as a cover.

Trump: "No estate tax, no going to banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases, shylocks and bad people. But they took away a lot, a lot of, uh, family. They destroyed a lot of families. But we did the opposite. So just remember, to me, it's so important. And it was important for places like we're at right now."

And that place was Des Moines, Iowa. There were a lot of farmers at the rally that held up signs saying "Farmers First," not realizing the next day Trump would be signing a bill that was going to put them out of business permanently.

Coming back from the rally, after landing with Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, there were press waiting for him.

Reporter: Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about one of the words you used during your speech, Shylock, that's widely viewed as an anti-semitic phrase. Did you intend for the word to be used that way?

Trump: Never heard it that way to me. Shylock is somebody saying that a money-lender is at high rates. I've never heard it that way. You view it differently than me. I've never heard that. But anything else?

So, now we have to figure out whether Donald Trump actually has ever seen a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Or the movie made in 2004 with Al Pacino. Or Orson Welles' 1969 version. The odds of him ever seen it in a theater are nil.

So where did he learn the term? He's not talking, when he used it, about the character Shylock. He's talking about it, meaning a money grubbing lender.

I would bet it was told to him by Allen Weisselberg. He was the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump organization, and he got convicted in 2022 of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, and falsifying business records. He is Jewish, and I'm sure he knows what it means.

The Anti-Defamation League and the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs were highly critical of Trump's use of the word. If you're not describing the character in the play, you're making an antisemitic remark.

Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote in a post, "This is not an accident. It follows years in which Trump has normalized antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories --- it's deeply dangerous."

Rep. Dan Goldman posted, "This is blatant and vile antisemitism and Trump knows exactly what he's doing. Anyone who truly opposes antisemitism calls it out wherever it occurs --- on both extremes. As I do. Where is @EliseStefanik and the GOP now that antisemitism is coming from Trump?"

Good question. I've been calling Trump's antisemitism crusade for what it is, a bludgeon to attack higher education because of Palestinian protests, or using the Palestinian protests as the excuse to do what he already wanted to do.

This will generate some bumps for Trump, and then disappear. When Republicans are antisemitic it's always an accident. If it's a Democrat, especially a Muslim, it's a crime, a civil rights violation worthy of DOJ prosecution.

This will be just another example of double standards. Oops, I didn't mean it, versus, you should go to jail.

Trump does this everyday, but finally someone caught him on one he couldn't just ignore. But he tried to anyway. All depends on how much Jewish organizations want to make a point of it. They have been supporting Trump because of his attacks on antisemitism on college campuses.

Do they have the spine to actually do something, or will it all be forgotten tomorrow? It will be forgotten tomorrow because there will be the next outrage, and then another.

This is just one in a series of insults and racist remarks. He'll say something else like it the next time he speaks.

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