SUBLIME:

You traced this long arc of everyone from Churchill to Sheldon Adelson who got the medal. This month, we saw Trump's arc, from getting the award to unfortunately having dinner with a neo-Nazi. How did that come about?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, I find it deplorable that he had dinner with an overt anti-Semite like Kanye West--Ye, I mean--who only a month ago called for the death of all Jews, for God's sake.

So, how do you understand this? You said that Trump was a huge friend of the Jewish people.

You know what? I can't answer that. It makes no sense. Somebody who's such an extraordinary friend of Israel, whose daughter is an Orthodox Jew, whose grandchildren are Orthodox Jews--I cannot explain why he would want to have dinner with an overt anti-Semite and dinner with a white-supremacist Jew-hater, an ugly, ugly scum like Nick Fuentes. And Trump says, "I didn't know who it was." Even if I take him at his word, that he didn't know who Fuentes was, fine, now he knows. Why doesn't he say, "Fuentes is a despicable scum whose beliefs have no place in the United States of America"?

One possible answer is that he's sympathetic to those views, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't want to distance himself or really go after the people who marched at Charlottesville. And one of those people was Nick Fuentes. That might be an answer.

No, no. I can't believe that. Somebody who's as hostile to Jews and Israel as Fuentes and Kanye are would never do all the extraordinary things for Israel. Trump didn't have to do all those things. It was way beyond the call of duty.

Do you think that there could be people who, for whatever reason, have sympathies with Israel but don't like Jews much?

I think it's highly unlikely. If you like Israel, which is the Jewish state filled with Jews, how can you hate Jews? Can you like Italy and hate Italians? Can you like Spain and hate Spanish people? It's beyond my comprehension that that's a possibility.

Tweet   @brothersjudd