At two press conferences, last week, President Trump gave peculiar,
and troubling, responses to reporters' questions about anti-Semitism.
In the first instance, last Wednesday, Mr. Trump was asked about the
recent rise in anti-Semitic acts in the country. The President
discussed, initially (and oddly), his Electoral College victory. The next
day, he berated an Orthodox Jewish reporter (for Ami, a Jewish
magazine), who asked how Mr. Trump would address the recent
anti-Semitic incidents (such as, bomb
threats directed at dozens of Jewish Community Centers since the start
of the year). Mr. Trump cut the reporter off, and proclaimed, angrily,
that he was not an anti-Semite, or a racist--even though the reporter
had made no such suggestion. Mr. Trump called the reporter's question
"insulting."
Clearly, the President misunderstood the question--or simply didn't bother to listen to it carefully.
Yesterday--following eleven additional bomb threats directed at Jewish
Community Centers, and after the vandalizing of a large number of
headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Missouri--the President addressed the
issue of anti-Semitism directly.
From The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/02/20/scores-of-headstones-vandalized-at-st-louis-jewish-cemetery-jewish-centers-threatened-across-country-as-jewish-centers-receive-threats-across-country/
And this story, from The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/us/politics/trump-speaks-out-against-anti-semitism.html
