Almost a decade ago, in the heat of the 2016 US presidential campaign, Jared Kushner wrote a high-profile essay that began with the words, “My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.”

The reason Kushner felt compelled to tell America that Donald Trump did not hate Jews was a meme Trump had recently tweeted, showing a picture of his rival Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of money, with the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever” embedded in a Star of David.

The tweet, later deleted, solidified a worry at the time among many American Jews that the Republican candidate was either an antisemite himself or too accepting of antisemites among his supporters.

ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt said then that it was “long past time” for Trump to “take a stand against anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hate,” and a 2017 ADL poll found that 33 percent of Americans considered Trump antisemitic (50% did not).

Since then, as US president, Trump has taken several actions with the stated purpose of combating antisemitism. But at the same time, a public fight has erupted among his diehard supporters over whether or not to welcome open antisemites into their ranks.

In his sprawling interview with The New York Times last week, Trump weighed in, and condemned antisemitism. When asked whether antisemites should have a place in his Make America Great Again movement, he said, “No, I don’t. I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them.”

Does that mean his MAGA movement will now rid itself of antisemitism? Not necessarily. That’s partly because Trump has historically shown a reluctance to disavow antisemites among his followers — a tendency he also exhibited in the Times interview.

And it’s partly........

© The Times of Israel