John Heilemann: Trump Attacked Bill Kristol Because He’s Jewish

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: “I don’t think Bill did anything particular this week other than the fact that he is a member of the Jewish faith. And the President has made a point, in moments when there is antisemitism that is a rage, or whether it's racism that is raging, and there are hate groups out on the March, the President makes a point always of sending the same message, which is nothing to see here, it's not a big deal, it doesn’t really bother me. This is like the message in all of this, which is are you going to call Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to express your concern or condolences or that you’re going to, you will fight to the last dog dies to find out the person who sent the pipe bomb — no, I will pass. That’s what he said on Friday. We will pass on that. He is constantly trying to give the message to people in those hate groups that he is not troubled by their hateful behavior, by their violent behavior. He does not rise to it, not because he doesn’t have Peggy Noonan this morning talking about it, he doesn’t have grace, certainly he doesn’t have any grace, and he does not try to tamp these things down. In fact, he sends the opposite message. And this last week, down in Florida, we had this debate between Gillum and DeSantis, in which Gillum said this thing that I thought was totally on the money for what is going on with Donald Trump. He said about DeSantis, I don’t think if you’re a racist, but other racists think you're racist. And with Trump, it's the same thing. You can say, I don’t know if he is a racist, I don’t know if he's a antisemite. I don't know. But I know that the racists and antisemites think that he is perfectly tolerant of racial violence and antisemitic violence. We've seen it in Charlottesville, we saw during the campaign, and we see it now.”