The Time the Trump Campaign Blamed Microsoft for His Antisemitic Tweet

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

In response to the pro-Palestinian encampments that now dot U.S. college campuses, Republican House leaders quickly drew up a bill that would give the federal government authority to crack down on protests considered antisemitic or even anti-Zionist. House Republican whip Tom Emmer said that “pro-terrorist antisemites [are] taking over” at American universities.

These efforts are part of a long-running Republican effort to present the GOP as the party stamping out antisemitism in America. One major problem with this line of argument is that Republicans’ standard-bearer, Donald Trump, has a history of saying ridiculously offensive things about Jews.

It’s a long history. The former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino remembered that back in 1991, his old boss said that “the only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.” And his public comments haven’t been much better. In a speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition during his campaign in 2015, Trump played into antisemitic tropes about Jews in business. “I’m a negotiator like you folks,” he said. “Is there anybody that doesn’t renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them — perhaps more than any other room I’ve ever spoken in.”

Perhaps the single weirdest antisemitic moment of that campaign came in July 2016, when Trump tweeted a picture of Hillary Clinton, who is not Jewish, next to a Star of David that read “Most corrupt candidate ever” in front of a pile of money.

The imagery, which was taken from a Twitter account that also posted swastikas made out of Clinton’s face, understandably offended many people, dominating the news for several days back in the era when Trump’s outrageous antics were still novel. Trump unsurprisingly deflected responsibility for the image, and social-media director Dan Scavino took the blame. His defense was novel. “The sheriff’s badge — which is available under Microsoft’s ‘shapes’ — fit with the theme of corrupt Hillary and that is why I selected it,” Scavino said in a statement. The presence of a six-point star in the office suite of the largest software company in the world apparently meant the campaign did no wrong.

Trump then deleted the original tweet and reposted the image with a red circle instead of a star, though the points of the star were still visible if you zoomed in closely enough. He also included the words “America First” in the tweet, a phrase the Anti-Defamation League had requested Trump abandon because of its antisemitic history. Trump then abandoned any pretense of shame, saying at a rally that he regretted deleting the tweet. “It could have been a sheriff’s star. It could have been a regular star,” he said before his supporters in Cincinatti. “My boy comes home from school — Barron — he draws stars all over the place. I never said, ‘Oh, that’s the Star of David, Barron.’ It’s a star! Have you all seen this? It’s a star!”

The former president has denied any anti-Jewish bias over the years, claiming shortly after he was inaugurated that “I am the least antisemitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” His Modern Orthodox Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner has served as a reliable shield for such charges; Kushner said after the badge incident that Trump is a “tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism.” (Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism after partnering up with Jared.) Trump also regularly touts his support for Israel.

But Trump kept doing his best to challenge his son-in-law’s claim of tolerance. Months after Six-Pointed-Star Gate, the campaign debuted an ad in which Trump discussed how “elite” figures like George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Lloyd Blankfein run the world economy. (All three are Jewish.) In office, Trump famously downplayed the neo-Nazi violence at Charlottesville in 2017, saying there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Unite the Right rally.

And as Trump vies for a second term, the list keeps getting longer. In March, Trump repeated prior comments stating that Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and “their religion.” And shortly after the 2022 midterms, he had dinner with raving antisemite Nick Fuentes. It seems unlikely that he will be able to blame Microsoft for that one.