Democrats are not seeing eye to eye on whether the party has a problem with antisemitism ahead of the November general election. 

“It’s easy to call out people with Tiki torches saying ‘Jews will not replace us’ or the former president saying ‘very fine people on both sides,’ Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said in a statement to Fox News Digital, referencing a rally with White supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. 

“However, when Democrats look inward and see ‘go back to Poland’ or ‘kill the Zionists,’ they pretend the antisemitic rhetoric on the left isn’t happening, or they are silent,” he added. “And as it turns out, the left and the right have something in common.”

As the war between Israel and terrorist group Hamas has gone on, initially spurred by the latter’s surprise attack on innocent civilians on Oct. 7, acts of antisemitism have been observed more often in the U.S. 

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The Anti-Defamation League reported that U.S. antisemitic assaults in the three months following the October attack in Israel shot up, surpassing the totals for entire years in the past. 

The ADL said 3,291 assaults happened between Oct. 7 and Jan. 7. In 2022, 3,697 assaults occurred over the course of the entire year. The totals for each of the last 10 years, except for 2022, were less than that three-month period following the beginning of Israel’s war with Hamas. 

This month, anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations rapidly expanded at top-tier universities, with a Gaza solidarity encampment that is persisting at Columbia University inspiring many of its higher education counterparts to take over their respective campuses, disrupt school activity, and intimidate Jewish students. 

A rabbi at the New York school ultimately reccommended Columbia Jewish students return home to ensure their own safety.

While many Republican lawmakers have been quick to call out the demonstrations, Democrats have more often been quiet, and they have also been measured in their responses and calls for action from schools and police. 

Some Democrats have even supported the encampment at Columbia, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who recently visited students involved in the protest. 

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Columbia University’s encampment has persisted.  (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has additionally discouraged the use of police enforcement against such demonstrations. 

Rachel Rosen, the chief communications officer for the group Democratic Majority for Israel, told Fox News Digital, “Antisemitism is emanating from the far left and the far right.”

However, she said, “President Biden has forcefully condemned antisemitism and defended Israel.”

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Biden has been criticized for both support of Israel and backing away from the U.S. ally. (Getty Images)

She added, “We’re still waiting for GOP leaders to condemn Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘Jewish space lasers,’ the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina’s Holocaust denialism and Donald Trump’s disgraceful trafficking in antisemitic tropes and dining with an actual Nazi.” 

“Donald Trump regularly demeans Jewish Americans, dines with White nationalists, and said Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things,’” agreed Eric Schultz, senior advisor to former President Barack Obama. “Most Jewish voters support President Biden and that is because he has shown steadfast support for the Jewish people, especially with antisemitism on the rise.”

The White House didn’t provide comment on whether the Democratic Party has a problem with antisemitism to Fox News Digital in time for publication. 

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., who has emerged as a vocal advocate of Israel, was quick to say the party does have such a problem: “The far left, clearly. And that seems to manifest itself especially on the college campuses,” he said. 

According to Fetterman, the Democrats can grapple with the issue “by calling it out,” which he noted he has been doing. However, he said he wasn’t going to give his colleagues advice on how to do so.

“I’m not aware of it,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said when asked by Fox News Digital if the Democrats had an issue with antisemitism within the party. “But if there is, I’d be concerned.”

Tester is campaigning for re-election in Montana, which is poised to be one of the most competitive races in the country, rating as a “Toss Up” by non-partisan political handicapper the Cook Political Report. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., shared with Fox News Digital that he doesn’t believe there is an issue among Democrats with antisemitism. “I don’t believe there are antisemites among Democrats in the United States Congress,” he said, noting that he couldn’t possibly know the beliefs of every individual Democratic voter. 

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Tester is in the midst of a tough re-election campaign. (Anna Moneymaker)

“People often say things that may be misconstrued,” he explained. “And sometimes they say things that are offensive. But I don’t believe deep in their hearts people in the United States Congress hate Jews.”

Several Democrats, prompted as to whether there is specifically an issue on the left, avoided answering, instead condemning antisemitism in general. 

“As the co-founder of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, I’ve been working across the aisle to fight the scourge of antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head, regardless of political party or ideology,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said in a statement to Fox News Digital. Rosen is the only Jewish woman in the Senate. 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., similarly emphasized in a statement, “Antisemitism has no place in our country and I condemn this hate in no uncertain terms.” 

The women each face their own competitive re-election battles in Nevada and Wisconsin in November. 

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., didn’t answer whether there was a problem within the party, but noted he felt badly for students across the country who are having school and graduation ceremonies potentially interrupted amid the hysteria of the demonstrations. 

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The question was also sidestepped by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., whose office directed Fox News Digital instead to recent legislation he introduced to address antisemitism on college campuses. 

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., pointed to his statement denouncing “hateful, antisemitic harassment and intimidation” at Columbia, without commenting on the party’s potential antisemitism concern. 

Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University explained that “The problem for the Democrats – Biden in particular, is not antisemitism.”

Instead, the issue they face is “how to deal with Israel and how to deal with the protests, especially in terms of the general disruption to society for which Biden and the Democrats may be held accountable, ultimately, in the 2024 election.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S., did not provide comment in time for publication.  

Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and Bob Casey, D-Penn., who face tough re-election contests in November, also didn’t provide comments.

Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Mark Warner, and Reps. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., were additionally reached out to by Fox News Digital. 

Donald Trump has fussed about many things during his criminal trial in Manhattan: the judge, prosecutors, their relatives, witnesses, jurors and of course the media, for reporting on the sparse crowds outside.

Yet Trump of all people knows that his fellow New Yorkers are proudly blasé about celebrity goings-on. It shouldn’t be surprising that not much of a crowd forms at the courthouse where the Don has been in the dock. After all, if you’ve seen one trial of a mob boss in Gotham, you’ve seen ‘em all.

And Trump’s trial — where he’s charged with fraudulently covering up pre-election hush money payments to Stormy Daniels in 2016, to keep voters in the dark about their alleged tryst — resembles nothing so much as a prosecution of yet another organized crime figure, even if it is, in fact, unprecedented: The first criminal case against a former U.S. president in history.

Lest anyone think the quick-to-complain Trump might grouse about being likened to gangsters, he draws the parallel himself, repeatedly.

“I’ve been indicted more than Alphonse Capone,” Trump boasted at a conservative conference in February. (Fact check: False, but he’s close.) He regularly, and admiringly, compares himself to ol’ “Scarface” at MAGA rallies. “He was seriously tough, right?” tough-guy Trump said to Iowa rally-goers in October. Last year on social media, he called Capone “the late great gangster.” Great?

The shtick might be funny if what underlies it weren’t so serious. As we head into the third week of the People of New York State vs. Donald J. Trump in that dingy courthouse so far removed from the Don’s usual gilt opulence, it’s downright disturbing to contemplate the similarities between his trial and that of a mob boss.

How can it be that this man is tied or ahead of President Biden in the polls? I remain confident Trump will pay a political price in time, as the sordidness of all this sinks in.

Perhaps the most distressing of the mob comparisons is this: The safety of jurors is a real concern. Their identities are secret to protect against intimidation or harm, and one juror was dismissed after confessing her fear. Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance posted on X that she’s seen such trepidation for jurors only “in a case involving violent organized crime.”

And it’s not the first time for Trump. The jurors who in January found that he defamed writer E. Jean Carroll after she successfully sued him for sexual assault, also had their identities withheld. After that civil trial, federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan warned them, “My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury.” Chilling.

Former prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann noted on MSNBC that he’d last heard a judge similarly caution some jurors decades ago, after they convicted Genovese crime family boss Vincent Gigante. “It is remarkable,” he added, “ that that same admonition was said with respect to somebody who was the president of the United States.”

It’s tragic, actually. Trump once swore to uphold the rule of law; now he’s making a mockery of it and putting innocents and civil servants at risk.

There’s also worry for witnesses. Prosecutors won’t share their witness list with Trump’s defense team, an act that’s typically routine.

“Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses. We’re not telling them who the witnesses are,” prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. “I can’t fault them for that,” Judge Juan M. Merchan said, dismissing the appeals of Trump lawyer Todd Blanche.

Trump’s tweets earned him a gag order from Merchan against attacking witnesses as well as prosecutors, court staff and the judge’s and Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s families. Such gags are rare, except of course in trials of boorish mobsters.

The judge and prosecutors fear Trump will intimidate those he’s targeted, and perhaps spur some unhinged supporter to violence. (It’s not as if there is no precedent for that!) The threats Trump stokes also explain much of the heavy security around the courthouse.

A final mob connection: Trump’s demeanor in court — the practiced scowls captured in photos and courtroom sketches, and his wise-guy mutterings reported by journalists in the room. His model, Trump told biographer-turned-critic Tim O’Brien, is none other than the murderous mafioso John Gotti. “The thing he respected about Gotti,” O’Brien told MSNBC, “was that he … sat there in court and he looked at the jurors and he looked at the judge with a big F-U on his face.”

Trump’s mob modeling goes way back. His former lawyer Michael Cohen, a key witness against him, said Trump for decades ran his family company “much like a mobster would do.” Cohen, a self-described consigliere, admits to intimidating people and lying on Trump’s behalf. “He doesn’t give you orders,” Cohen told Congress in 2019. “He speaks in a code, and I understand the code.” Trump responded to Cohen’s testimony in mob-speak, natch, tweeting that his former lawyer was “a rat.”

The trial’s first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, testified last week about his cooperation with Trump in 2016 to “catch and kill” prurient Trump stories before that year’s election. He repeatedly described Cohen warning him that “the boss” would be angry if Pecker didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

The mob mentality gives a particularly clear perspective on Trump’s claim earlier in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Eight years later, he’s on trial for something less than murder, yet the upshot is the same: He’s banking that his voters don’t care.

He’s almost certainly right about most if not all of them. But Trump needs more than just his MAGA loyalists to win. Let’s hope this trial, whatever the outcome, leaves everyone else determined not to see a godfather in the White House again.

@jackiekcalmes

“There are some who call you the enemy of the people. That’s wrong and it’s dangerous. You literally risk your lives doing your job. And some of your colleagues have given their lives, and many have suffered grievous injuries. Other reporters have lost their freedom. Journalism is clearly not a crime, not here, not there, not anywhere in the world. We’re doing everything we can to bring home journalists, fellow journalists, Austin and all Americans, like Paul Whelan. You know, who wrongfully detained all around the world. And I give you my word as a Biden, we’re not going to give up until we get them home. All of them. All of them.” “At The Wall Street Journal, they are counting, for Moscow correspondent Evan Gershkovich, 396 days since he was jailed in Russia. The U.S. government has designated Evan as wrongfully detained. And Evan’s parents and his family are with us tonight. And we are with you, always. We remember Austin Tice, 4,276 days, nearly 12 years since he was kidnapped in Syria. His mother, Deborah, is with us, and Mrs. Tice, we are with you. And Mr. President, again, we humbly ask that you do everything you can to bring them home.