Pushing for Tighter Borders, President Asks Jews for Support – The New York Times

“Special thanks to Representative Omar of Minnesota,” Mr. Trump said, expressing gratitude to other attendees, including Sheldon G. Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate and prominent Republican donor, and his wife, Miriam. “Oh, I forgot, she doesn’t like Israel. I’m so sorry.”

(Ms. Omar herself was recently the target of death threats. This week, federal agents arrested a New York resident, Patrick W. Carlineo Jr., after he reportedly called her office, described her as “a terrorist” and promised, in an expletive-laden threat, to “put a bullet in her skull.”)

Ms. Omar later responded on Twitter by quoting a prayer of forgiveness: “My Lord, forgive my people for they do not know.”

Mr. Trump also appeared to blur the lines between the American Jews in the audience and Israelis, referring at one point to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as “your prime minister” and warning that congressional Democrats “could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

At one point, he asked the crowd, “How the hell did you support President Obama? How the hell did you support the Democrats?” Reminded by the audience that members of the Republican Jewish Coalition did not, in fact, support Mr. Obama, he laughed before conceding: “You guys didn’t. That’s right.”

A few protesters were escorted from the arena early on in the speech, chanting “Jews are here to say: Occupation is a plague,” according to IfNotNow, a Jewish organization that issued a statement afterward. Logan Bayroff, a spokesman for J Street, the liberal Jewish organization, said the president’s remarks about immigrants and minorities were “extremely discordant and extremely disgusting to the majority of Jewish people.”