Trump promotes model's fringe 'Jexodus' campaign encouraging Jews to leave Democratic Party
President Trump on Tuesday kept up his campaign to turn Jewish voters away from the Democratic Party, tweeting support for an organization founded only a week ago called “Jexodus.”
Trump’s tweet quoted its spokesperson, Elizabeth Pipko, a 23-year-old model turned activist and former Trump campaign staffer.
Pipko appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning.
“‘Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party,’” Trump tweeted, quoting Pipko. “‘We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.’”
Jexodus.org, a site for “Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics,” launched earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
“We reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left,” a message on the site reads. “Progressives, Democrats, and far too many old-school Jewish organizations take our support for granted. After all, we’re Jewish, and Jews vote for Democrats. Until today.”
American Jews supported Hillary Clinton over Trump by 71-24, the largest margin of any of the denominations (including “unaffiliated”) surveyed by Pew Research and consistent with the results of the last five presidential elections.
“We’re done standing with supposed Jewish leaders and allegedly supportive Democrats who rationalize, mainstream, and promote our enemies,” said a press release announcing the site’s launch. “We’d rather spend forty years wandering in the desert than belong to a party that welcomes Jew-haters like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
Thank you @foxandfriends!!! pic.twitter.com/lgrCG5GSy7
— Elizabeth Pipko (@elizabethpipko) March 12, 2019
According to the Daily Wire, Jexodus is the “brainchild” of Jeff Ballabon, a Jewish Republican operative and an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.
It's unclear how many “members” Jexodus has.
According to her bio, Pipko is an “international model, Trump 2016 campaign staffer, poet, patriot, and fiercely proud millennial.” Her official title is “national Jexodus spokesperson.”
“We left Egypt, and now we’re leaving the Democratic Party,” Pipko said on “Fox & Friends” in comments the president omitted from his tweet.
Trump has been sounding this theme since last week, when the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a Democrat-sponsored resolution condemning hate. The resolution was drafted in response to remarks by Omar, a freshman Democratic representative from Minnesota, which critics described as anti-Semitic.
It was subsequently broadened to condemn all forms of bigotry, which Trump described as evidence that “Democrats hate the Jewish people,” according to guests at a Mar-a-Lago dinner, as reported by Axios.
“The Democrats have become an anti-Israel party. They’ve become an anti-Jewish party,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn Friday. “And I thought that vote was a disgrace.”
All the Democrats present in the House voted for the resolution, but so did all but 23 of the Republicans.
At a press briefing Monday, the White House defended Trump’s comments, with press secretary Sarah Sanders sparring with reporters who challenged the president’s assertions.
“The president has been an unwavering and committed ally to Israel and the Jewish people,” Sanders said. “And frankly the remarks that have been made by a number of Democrats and failed to be called out by Democrat leadership is frankly abhorrent and it’s sad and it’s something that should be called by name. It shouldn’t be put in a watered-down resolution.”
Sanders, though, refused to answer when asked whether Trump believes “Democrats hate Jews.”
“I think that’s a question you ought to ask the Democrats,” Sanders said.
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