President Donald Trump said there is no place for antisemites in the Republican Party or the MAGA movement, delivering an unequivocal — and characteristically self-referential — rebuke during a sweeping, two-hour interview with The New York Times published Sunday.

Pressed on whether prominent figures on the right who espouse antisemitic views belong in his political coalition, Trump was blunt. “I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them,” he said. Asked directly whether he condemns antisemitism within conservative circles, Trump replied, “Certainly.”

From there, Trump pivoted to his own record.

“There has been no better president in the history of the world as we know it that has been stronger or better and less antisemitic, certainly, than Donald Trump,” he said, referring to himself in the third person. He cited receiving what he described as a top Israeli honor and argued that his policies ushered in lasting peace in the Middle East.

Interviewers then asked about Nick Fuentes, the far-right provocateur and Holocaust denier. Trump said he did not know Fuentes, despite dining together in 2022 alongside Kanye West.

“I had dinner with him one time, where he came as a guest of Kanye West,” Trump said. “I didn’t know who he was bringing.”

West, whose antisemitic outbursts in 2022 included praising Adolf Hitler and threatening Jews online, saw his career implode, most notably when Adidas severed its partnership with him. His rhetoric has resurfaced periodically since, including a Super Bowl ad earlier this year and a song released in May that sampled Nazi imagery. West later met with a rabbi to apologize, attributing his behavior to bipolar disorder.

The Times also questioned Trump about Paul Ingrassia, whom Trump appointed as deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration, despite the emergence of text messages in which Ingrassia expressed sympathy for Nazism. Trump said he was unaware of the messages, citing the scale of his administration.

“I have thousands of people working here,” Trump said, before again pointing to his family. “I have a daughter who’s married to a Jewish person. My daughter happens to be Jewish, beautiful, three grandchildren are Jewish,” he said, referring to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. “I am the least antisemitic person probably there is anywhere in the world.”

Since returning to office, his administration has launched aggressive, high-profile efforts aimed at combating antisemitism, including cutting billions of dollars in federal funding to universities and pursuing deportations of foreign students involved in anti-Israel activism.

Despite this, a poll found that about half of American Jews think Trump is antisemitic. The same poll found that relatively few respondents believed the measures taken by the Trump administration reduce antisemitism, while a significantly larger share said they risk inflaming it.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)