This year’s presidential campaign, more than any in recent memory, has been threaded with debates over Israel, antisemitism and the Jewish vote — and Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally was no exception.
It featured an antisemitic joke, a speaker who recently platformed a Holocaust denier, and the kind of nativist rhetoric that has historically alarmed Jewish voters.
“America is for Americans and Americans only!” proclaimed, Stephen Miller, the Jewish architect of Trump’s immigration policies. A comedian compared Puerto Rico to an island of floating garbage and joked about Jews and money. Speakers railed against immigrants and dubbed Kamala Harris the “antichrist,” among other epithets.
Ahead of the event, Democrats likened it to the infamous 1939 Nazi rally at the same arena, and as it was ongoing, Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said there was “a direct parallel” between the two rallies. Some viewers shared the impression.
“I despise comparisons to Nazis and the Holocaust but truly felt shades of 1939 watching clips from today: crowds at MSG cheering the most insane and racist and unpatriotic bullshit under the banner of ‘America First,’” tweeted the Jewish comedian Alex Edelman, who has recently canvassed for Harris.
Jewish Trump supporters disagree: Far from being a Nazi-style gathering, they say, the rally boasted Jews in the stands and onstage in the country’s most Jewish city. Speakers throughout the night pledged to defend Israel. Orthodox Jews sang Hasidic songs as they waited to get in. The conservative radio host Dave Rubin tweeted a picture of an Israeli flag in the crowd.
“This flag could never be displayed at a Kamala rally as her base is a bunch of Israel hating, America hating lunatics,” he wrote. “So f— off with that MSG Nazi rally bulls—.”
In his stemwinder of a speech Sunday evening, Trump sounded familiar notes, pledging as he has throughout his campaign to never allow a repeat of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
“If you don’t have a president that gets it, if you don’t have a president that is respected by the other side — and they did respect us four years ago, they really respected us, Iran was broke, they had no money,” Trump said. “Israel, Oct. 7, would never ever have happened, would never have happened, all those people would be alive right now, those people who were killed on that horrible day.”
Other speakers also said Trump would be better positioned than Harris to protect Israel. Howard Lutnick, the financier who co-chairs Trump’s transition team and who is a major giver to causes in Israel, made the case in stark terms.
“We must elect Donald J. Trump president because we must crush jihad!” Lutnick said, pounding his fist.
Rudy Giuliani, the scandal-plagued former New York Mayor who served as Trump’s attorney, compared the Oct. 7 invasion to Sept. 11, 2001 — the attack that placed him in a warm national spotlight.
“Sept. 11 was our darkest hour, Oct. 7 was Israel’s darkest hour — they are our best friend,” said Giuliani, who in the past had close ties with pro-Israel activists. He cited a purported quote from President Ronald Reagan: “We have to be there for Israel always, because they are always there for us.”
Sid Rosenberg, a Jewish talk radio host, ridiculed Democrats in profane terms, among them Hillary Clinton, the nominee Trump defeated in 2016, who had compared the event to the 1939 rally.
“I just got back from Israel about two weeks ago. I get back and they go, ‘Sid, you want to speak at this MSG thing? ‘I go sure, out of character for me to speak at a Nazi rally, I was just in Israel,’ but I took the gig,” he joked. “She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a b—h. The whole f—ing party, a bunch of degenerates, lowlives, Jew-haters and lowlifes.”
The far-right voices who have adulated Trump since he launched his political career, and whom he has never fully disavowed, were also prominently in evidence. One keynote speaker was Tucker Carlson, the talk show host and top Trump ally who has questioned defense assistance for Israel, platformed a Holocaust denier, and drawn Jewish groups’ criticism for dabbling in antisemitic tropes himself.
(Carlson did not mention Jews or Israel but mocked Harris’ ethnicity, calling her a “Samoan Malaysian low I.Q. former California prosecutor.” Harris is Black and South Asian.)
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a former Harvard Divinity School graduate student who sued the school for the anti-Israel and antisemitic hostility he said he endured on campus after Oct. 7, and who has become the face of disaffected Jewish Democrats who now support Trump, told The Belaaz, an Orthodox outlet, that he had backed out of attending the rally because of Carlson, who he said was a “big threat to the Jewish community.”
And a set by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who made headlines for likening Puerto Rico to an island of floating garbage, also included a joke about Jews and Palestinians.
“It’s unbelievable what’s happening right now,”Hinchcliffe said. “Ukraine vs. Russia, Israel vs. Palestine, it’s like bad soccer games, who even cares, what are we doing, why is our money involved in these wars?” The crowd erupted into cheers.
Hinchcliffe continued, “When it comes to Israel and Palestine, we’re all thinking the same thing, settle your stuff already, best out of three, rock, paper, scissors,” he said. “You know the Palestinians are going to throw rocks every time. You also know the Jews have a hard time throwing that paper, you know what I’m saying!”
The Trump campaign disavowed Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Ricans, saying it “does not reflect the views of President Trump to the campaign.”
But Democrats said the rally made their case for them, noting that another speaker likened Harris to a prostitute and a childhood friend of Trump’s called Harris the “antichrist” while waving a crucifix.
“Trump’s MAGA Square Garden rally is making Hitler’s rally there look like a basket weaving convention,” said California Rep. Eric Swalwell, attaching to his tweet a video of Hinchcliffe’s remarks.
The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish group that calls out antisemitism and hate and has criticized Carlson extensively, denounced the offensive jokes — but did not name Trump or Hinchcliffe directly.
“Political rallies should be about politics and policy, not offensive jokes that denigrate Jews, Palestinians, Puerto Ricans, and other marginalized groups,” the ADL tweeted.
“In a moment when hate has surged and when tensions are high, there’s no place for bigotry or intolerance on the campaign trail, full stop,” the ADL added. “We expect more and hope for better in these last days before the election.”
At least one liberal Jewish group took issue with the ADL’s omission of Trump’s name.
“This was a Trump rally,” the liberal Israel lobby J Street wrote in a reply to the ADL tweet. This violent, bigoted rhetoric is part and parcel of his MAGA movement and must be called out directly. Organizations that claim to represent Jews and combat antisemitism *must* be willing to name and condemn the leaders of this hate-fueled movement.”
