Donald Trump on Wednesday night falsely smeared Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as a “proud member of Hamas.”
The Republican presidential nominee made the insulting remark about the top-ranking U.S. Jewish official at a rally in Pennsylvania. It came on the same day that Trump separately sparked an angry backlash for questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity.
“Chuck Schumer refused to shake the Israeli prime minister’s hand,” Trump said at the rally Wednesday night in Harrisburg. “Chuck Schumer has become a Palestinian. Yes Can you believe it? He’s become a proud member of Hamas.”
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Hamas, the Palestinian group the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, led the attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken hostage. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas, according to the Gaza health ministry.
In response to Trump calling him a proud member of Hamas, Schumer told The Washington Post: “The lower [Trump] drops in polls, the more unhinged he becomes.”
Trump’s handshake quip referred to the New York Democrat’s actions during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress last week. Schumer—who has been critical of Netanyahu’s approach to the war in Gaza and has called for Israel to hold elections to replace him—did attend Netanyahu’s address but did not shake his hand afterward.
“I went to this speech because the relationship between Israel and America is ironclad and I wanted to show that,” he said on CBS’ Face the Nation over the weekend. “But at the same time, as everyone knows, I have serious disagreements with the way Benjamin Netanyahu has conducted these policies.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Schumer made a Senate floor speech criticizing comments Trump made about Harris’ Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff. In an interview Tuesday, Trump agreed with a radio host describing the second gentleman as a “crappy Jew.” Trump also used the appearance to say that Jews who vote for Democrats are fools and that Jewish supporters of Harris “should have their head examined.”
In his speech, Schumer said it would be a “mistake” to simply dismiss the former president’s comments as “just another Trump insult.” “Calling Jews fools and suggesting they are bad or disloyal because of their political beliefs is not just some juvenile insult. It’s an old antisemitic trope that goes back centuries, one of dual loyalty,” Schumer said. “It’s been used for a very long time to drive Jews out of their homes, to paint them as untrustworthy, to deny their basic dignity.”
“So when Donald Trump goes on air and attacks Jews for the way they vote, he knows precisely what he is doing,” Schumer added. “He’s sowing the seeds of division. He is propagating naked antisemitism.”
Prior to his rally Wednesday, Trump appeared at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Chicago, where he claimed Harris “turned Black.” “She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said, adding that “somebody should look into” the matter.
Harris later described Trump’s comments as “the same old show—the divisiveness and the disrespect.”
