Donald Trump addresses his controversial interview at Republican Jewish meeting

T. Belman. Basically, he said that he wants to see if he can get a deal and that you have to start by being even-handed. He didn’t retract anything and he didn’t repeat anything about settlements. He said first he wants to visit Israel and talk to Bibi before issuing a position paper.

By Zaid Jilani,THE INTERCEPT

Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Thursday, Donald Trump once again demonstrated how he is not your typical presidential candidate.

“You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” Trump told members of the Sheldon Adelson-funded hardline pro-Israel lobbying organization.

He went on to mock rival Jeb Bush for taking money from interest groups and then toeing their line. “That’s why you don’t want to give me money, OK, but that’s OK, you want to control your own politician. That’s fine, good,” he concluded.

And then, unlike the candidates who do want the coalition’s money, Trump broke with GOP orthodoxy, questioning Israel’s commitment to peace, calling for even treatment in Israeli-Palestinian deal-making, and refusing to call for Jerusalem to be Israel’s undivided capital — provoking a wave of boos from the audience.

Trump was asked about earlier comments he had made to an Associated Press reporter that he believes peace hinges on “whether or not Israel wants to make the deal — whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things.”

Trump was quickly assailed after that comment by rival candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who argued that land rights and a peace deal were not the issue and that Trump shouldn’t “question Israel’s commitment to peace.”

Trump continued to take a considerably more even-handed approach to the issue than his rivals at the event on Thursday. “I said that you have to have a commitment to make [peace]. I don’t know that Israel has the commitment to make it. I don’t know that the other side has the commitment to make it,” he said.

“I’d like to go in with a clean slate, and just say, ‘Let’s go, everybody’s even, we love everybody and let’s see if we can do something.’”

The moderator tried to pin Trump down on the litmus-test issue of whether Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel.

“You know what I want to do, I want to wait until I meet with Bi —” started Trump before he was interrupted by booing.

“Who’s the wise guy?” Trump asked. “Do me a favor, just relax, OK. You’ll like me very much, believe me, and you wonder why you get yourself in trouble.”

Trump continued to heckle his heckler: “You can’t go in with that attitude. If you’re going to make a deal, you could make a great deal, you can’t go in with the attitude we’re going to shove it down your — you gotta go in and get it and do it nicely so everyone is happy.”

In other words, to Trump, who prides himself on deal-making, it’s simply obvious that you can’t make a deal between two people if you start off by saying one of them always gets their way no matter what.

Trump’s comments on refusing to take RJC money start around the 17-minute mark, and the testy question-and-answer period begins about 20 minutes in.

Trump praised Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and criticized the nuclear deal with Iran, and he got a laugh out of the crowd when he said, “Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks; we’re negotiators.”

But his call for parity in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict made his rhetoric rare among recent presidential contenders.

Refusing to call for an undivided Jerusalem is almost unheard of— even among Democrats.

Then-senator Barack Obama made that call during his 2008 campaign, and then-senator Hillary Clinton did it in 2007.

This year, Trump’s rivals Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both want the U.S. Embassy to be moved to Jerusalem to cement its status as undivided.

Although presidential candidates typically adopt that position during their campaigns, they abandon it when in government. Every administration, Republican and Democrat, has used a waiver to avoid compliance with the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, arguing that it would harm the peace process and thus U.S. national security.

December 4, 2015 | 14 Comments »

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14 Comments / 14 Comments

  1. I think a Trump administration will purposely incite a real war against Islam.

    Promises promises.

    But it certainly sounds good.

    Islam is tormenting innocents across the globe. Vanquishing the Muslims would spare countless people from being persecuted.

    Unfortunately, Americans have become soft and feminized. They agonize over civilian casualties, which makes decisively winning wars virtually impossible. The Democrats patron saint, FDR, literally set the women and children of Dresden on fire. Today, we wring our hands if terrorists on Guantanimo have some Sparkletts poured over their hideous faces.

    What we need is for Americans to become like you, Arnold. Mean. Vicious. Sadistic. Inhumane.

    Reminds me of my beloved husband, God rest his soul.

  2. @ babushka:
    Trump is not a public relations master. He is in fact a gifted demagogue, and that, I think, is one of his greatest political strengths.

    He knows exactly how to use and to manipulate his growing crowds, and those of us who have backed him from the start love every minute of that. You would probably be amazed to understand that so many Americans — including this particular Jewish American — care a lot more about nationalism than about democracy. We are looking for what we think will be the most brutally forceful leader in the recent history of the USA. Just like Abraham Lincoln’s administration, which suspended the right of habeas corpus for the duration of that war.

    Because that is precisely what it will take to turn this country around and to win the war against Islamic Jihadism. Do you seriously think I care about the civil liberty of our enemies? I would strip them of their citizenship and ship out those willing to go. For the hard-core cases, I would have every damned one of them assembled and put behind electrified barbed wire in American gulags, with vicious guard dogs yapping and machine gunners set up for interlocking fields of fire who try mutiny.

    Isn’t that exactly the way our Jewish nation was treated? I want retribution for every Jew who lost his or her rights, property, or life to the Goyim over the past 20 centuries. I think a Trump administration will purposely incite a real war against Islam. If so, that will serve both the USA, the various American nations, Israel, and the Jewish nation.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  3. All day I have been waiting for public relations master Trump to make this move, but Pataki beat him to it:

    Pataki Demands That AG Lynch Arrest Him For Urging War Against Islam

    Former Gov. George Pataki made a dramatic lunge for publicity in the GOP’s 2016 primary race with a Twitter-broadcast demand that he be arrested by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

    Lynch made it easy for Pataki — who has approximately zero percent of the GOP’s primary vote — by suggesting Thursday that she would arrest people who criticize the ideology of orthodox Islam. “When we talk about the First amendment we [must] make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not American. They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted,” she said at the Thursday fund-raiser for a radical Muslim advocacy group.

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/04/pataki-demands-ag-lynch-arrest-urging-war-islam/

  4. @ babushka:
    Trump isn’t running a phantasy wagon, and he will be the Republican nominee, and unless something unforeseen is added to the mix, will beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. Remember that most American voters select candidates in terms of what they think serves their interests, and responds to their hates and desires. Some of them have concern for the Jewish States and for our Jewish nation. Some among them think we can’t really be saved unless we espouse their version of Christianity. Others among them really don’t give a damn what happens to the Jews or the State of Israel. So you take what you can get and you go with it.

    In any case, I am not even remotely interested in candidates whom I am certain cannot muster enough political strength to get nominated. When wishes seem impossible, I stick with reality and try to put it to practical use.

    By the way. If Israel is to survive, it must keep control over all the lands west of the Jordan River. But Netanyahu’s government keeps talking and acting as though he and the State of Israel are ready to give up control of some of these lands to the greatest and most intensive enemies of the Jewish state and nation. So how do you expect Americans running for the US presidency to respond to whatever defeatist nonsense the prime minister of Israel breathes in their ears? They tell themselves the same sort of thing we Jews say: “If I am not for myself, than who am I, and whom do I imagine will help me?”

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  5. After a fleeting dalliance with reality, you are already back on the Trump fantasy wagon. The putz cannot determine who owns Jerusalem. Don’t claim after the election that you were blindsided. Trump is basically screaming, “Arnold Harris, Outspeaker, I am impartial in the battle between the Jews who want to live and the Muzzies who want to kill them.”

    And when it comes to Israel, we all know what “even-handed” means:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Flag_of_German_Reich_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg/2000px-Flag_of_German_Reich_%281935%E2%80%931945%29.svg.png

  6. Neither Cruz nor Rubio will win the Republican nomination for the US presidency in next year’s election. Trump has been leading the nomination run-up right from the get-go, and I am now certain he will win both the nomination and the election.

    The growing realization among the majority of Americans is that Jihadist Islam has declared and is beginning to carry out a war of terrorism against our country and our citizens. That, along with the following considerations, are creating a new political alliance that is backing Trump:

    1) Countrywide understanding that the government is openly facilitating illegal immigration into our country.

    2) Countrywide understanding that America has been de-industrialized by foreign trade policies of most of our recent presidential administrations.

    3) Growing national impatience with mindless but forced political correctness.

    4) A political mood change that we must fundamentally get rid of the control of our politicians by the organized monopoly of moneyed political wire-pullers.

    I couldn’t care less what Trump said to an assembly hall bought and paid for mainstream Jewish Republican political wire-pullers. He doesn’t need their money, and he knows in any case that he could never buy their support. But when the chips are down, I am certain that an elected Trump will not shaft the national interests of the Stae of Israel or the Jewish nation. And on a personal level, I respect him all he more because he is the only candidate who never lies to any audience about what he really thinks.

    And just for the record, I don’t match anybody’s political expectations. I come from a working-class Russian Jewish American family, but I have two university degrees, and I actally lived and studied in Israel, long enough to learn Zionism from Dr Israel Eldad of Lechi fame, and the Authentic Jewish Idea from the great Rav Meir Kahane. And I will in fact support Trump all the way.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  7. I suspect Trump bears no animus towards Jews

    babushka, put down the crack pipe and read the following. There is no doubt that Trump is an anti-Semite:

    December 4, 2015
    Trump says Jews won’t vote for him because they can’t control him with their money
    By Ed Straker

    Donald Trump, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), repeatedly said that Jews won’t vote for him because, since he isn’t accepting donations, they will not be able to control him with their money.

    “You are not going to support me even though you know I am the best thing that could happen for Israel. I know why you are not going to support me. You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money,” Trump told a full auditorium of Jewish donors and Republican Jewish supporters. “You want to control your own politicians.”

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/12/trump_says_jews_wont_vote_for_him_because_they_cant_control_him_with_their_money.html#.VmINyRHd1t4.twitter

  8. The negotiator comment was benign, and it is surrealistic for a self-hating pseudo Hebrew like Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo to pretend that he is offended. Let him first be offended that the Palis to whom he is so devoted want to murder his children.

    The problem is that Trump views life as being negotiable, and therefore views Israel as being negotiable. Nixon hated Jews but saved Israel, a dichotomy that was acceptable to me. I suspect Trump bears no animus towards Jews, but Israel will not benefit from having an American president who exists to wheal and deal. What’s needed is someone who will stand with Israel come hell or high water because his fundamentalist Christian faith mandates it.

    That is Ted Cruz.

  9. Marco Rubio as part of his speech,”Or consider the European Union’s recent approval of a new trade rule that requires special labeling of products produced in what the EU considers “Israeli-occupied territories.” I believe we need a president who is not afraid to call this out for what it is: anti-Semitism. I will be that president.
    I will take a very different approach to the United Nations. There will be no more complicity in attacks on Israel. Dictators, rogues, and terror sponsors will be publicly shamed. The United States will leave and defund UN entities that attack Israel or promote anti-Semitism.

    I will also speak out against anti-Semitism here in America.

    One important example is the movement that calls itself “BDS” – for boycott, divest, and sanction. This coalition of the radical left thinks it has discovered a clever, politically correct way to advocate Israel’s destruction. BDS couches hatred in the language of human rights and social justice.”

    Rubio gets it he checks all the boxes and understanding of Israel and the middle east and want very much to do the right thing for Israel and Jews.

    http://blog.4president.org/2016/2015/12/marco-rubios-remarks-at-the-republican-jewish-coalition-presidential-forum-as-prepared-for-delivery.html

  10. If the GOP nominate a Trump who seeks the lowest common denominator
    to appeal to potential voters and thus being divider not uniter they will loose the general election to Hillary Clinton inspite of her being a weak candidate.

    Trump barely knows the countries in the middle east yet alone any of the intricacies. He has no experienced foreign policy advisors and so just wings it. Nobody knows what he would do because he does not know what he would do.

  11. http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/politics/donald-trump-rjc-negotiator/index.html


    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/03/donald-trump-struggles-with-israel-question-at-republican-jewish-summit/

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/politics/donald-trump-rjc-negotiator/index.html

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-jewish-summit

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOP_2016_AP_CONVERSATION_TRUMP?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-12-03-03-24-45

  14. A New York right wing advocate was there and wrote:

    I was there. It was awful. I boo’d and then many in the audience joined in. He vowed to make a deal and seemingly put Israel and the Pals on equal footing. He wouldn’t give any specifics when pressed including on the ’67 lines (in guessing he has no idea what that means) and I think he had no idea what the bush/Sharon agreement was. He’s simply awful and yet he still got a standing ovation and at my lunch table, 4 people supported him enthusiastically despite missing an easy opportunity on the Jerusalem issue. He just bloviates and is simply awful.