US President Donald Trump has been condemned by Jewish and Muslim groups for using the term “Palestinian” as a slur in an attack on the country’s highest-ranking elected Jewish official.
In comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer had “become a Palestinian.”
“He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore, he’s a Palestinian,” Trump said.
Schumer, a long-serving Democratic senator from New York, has resisted Republican pressure this week to back their stopgap plan to avoid a government shutdown.
The Senate minority leader is a longtime advocate for Israel who has voiced support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also criticized Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
Jewish and Muslim organizations both slammed Trump’s comments as offensive.
“A President has many powers, but none of them include deciding who is and isn’t Jewish. Doing so, and using ‘Palestinian’ as a slur, are both beneath any (US president),” the Jewish activist group, the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement on X.
Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called on Trump to apologize, adding that his use of the term “Palestinian” as a racial slur was both “offensive and beneath the dignity of his office.”
Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, also condemned Trump’s statements, calling them “abhorrent.”
“Since taking office, he’s elevated antisemitic conspiracy theorists & attacked our democracy. His rhetoric, agenda, and alignment with right-wing extremists are endangering American Jews,” Soifer wrote on X.
Schumer’s office did not immediately reply to an AFP request for comment.
Last month, Trump also referred to Schumer as Palestinian when the president proposed a widely criticized plan for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate Palestinians.
And ahead of last year’s election, Trump accused Schumer of being a “proud member of Hamas.”
