When U.S. President Donald Trump re-ran for the presidency in 2024, American voters elected him on the premise that he would mark a shift from 2000s-era neoconservatism and keep the U.S. out of foreign wars. Americans on the political left, along with an increasing number on the right, did not think American interventionism worked throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, and felt these foreign conflicts were costly and did not always help American interests.
Then, this year, Trump ordered American troops to drop missiles on Iran. And some in the president’s inner circle, according to journalist Gabby Deutch of Jewish Insider, said to themselves: “This is the Trump we knew all along.”
The attack on Iran exposed a small but growing rift within the Republican party, wherein Israel sits squarely in the middle. Should the U.S. be interventionist or not? And what makes Israel the exception to any rule? Deutch, a senior Washington correspondent, joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to explain.
Transcript
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Hi, I’m Phoebe Maltz Bovy, and you’re listening to The Jewish Angle, a podcast from The CJN, where I look at Jews’ complicated place in today’s cultural and political landscape. Caught between anti-Semites and over-enthusiastic philosemites, how do we make sense of our own situation?
So there’s a conversation that I see on the left that’s very much about calling the right-wing out for hypocrisy regarding anti-Semitism, specifically in the United States context. As in, look at Trump doing all these things in the name of fighting antisemitism: deporting students, cracking down on universities, when there is Elon Musk doing what looks like a Nazi salute or Grok on X holding forth about Jews like some sort of Nazi AI, or indeed Vice President JD Vance, whichever isolationist and nativist think that doesn’t seem to bode well for Jews that you can also find here and there. So we’re recording this on July 17th, and it hit me recently that the thing I’d been thinking of as the MAGA movement—as this kind of unified force currently in charge of the United States—is actually a looser coalition of people who disagree in pretty profound ways, including, and maybe primarily on things, that have something direct or indirect to do with Jews. And I started to wonder if maybe we’re seeing something that’s more like a shift—sorry, not a shift—a rift on the MAGA right between philosemitic and antisemitic strains. I started thinking about this, then I started noticing about like 20 different articles about this, and I thought maybe there’s something to it. Here to help us sort out what is going on these days on the American right-wing where Jews are concerned is the brilliant journalist Gabby Deutsch. Gabby is the senior national correspondent at Jewish Insider. Welcome, Gabby.
Gabby Deutch: Thank you.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: So. But I’ll start with Trump, though. So Trump, President Donald had promised that he wasn’t going to do wars. He was going to sort of mark the split from the neoconservatism of the George W. Bush years. But then he bombed Iran. And at home in the United States—his home, I live in Canada—is doing all sorts of things to restructure higher education and immigration, partly in the name of keeping antisemitism out of the United States, although with a kind of his own definitions of antisemitism. So I’m wondering, though, to what extent, where Jews are concerned, does Trump represent a break from previous Republican politicians and to what extent a continuation?
Gabby Deutch: Well, I think until about a month ago, it felt like it. There was a break, not even from just other Republican presidents, but also from Trump’s first term, where he and his administration entered into nuclear agreements with Iran back in April. And a lot of the conversation coming from folks in his administration talked about nuclear negotiations in a somewhat similar way to how Obama and Biden and other Democrats have talked about it. And my colleagues and I spent a lot of time thinking about this and writing about this and looking at a key question that we’ve spent a lot of time considering, which is: there are, as a statement of fact, there are more people in this administration—the second Trump administration—who are isolationists, quote, unquote, restrainers they might call themselves, who do want the U.S. to play less of a role in the world. Which is to say, particularly within the Republican Party, less interested in strikes on Iran, getting involved in the Middle East, things of that nature. And we spent a lot of time looking at, is this isolationist wing winning within the Trump administration? Is the more interventionist, traditionally Republican wing of the party winning? And it looked like for a good chunk of the spring, that it was this more isolationist part of the party that had the upper hand and had the president’s ear.
I think that narrative has all changed quite a bit over the last month since Trump authorized the U.S. strikes on Iran, which obviously not just dealt a blow to the nuclear sites there, but also to the negotiations that were ongoing. And we saw Trump speak in very victorious language about the strikes and the impact and what turned out to be this 12-day war between Israel and Iran and taking an interest in military action in a way that I think a lot of people didn’t expect. Now, there are some who are from the more hawkish side of the Republican Party who said, this is the Trump we knew all along. We knew he would come through. I don’t think that it was a sure thing, but it did happen. So that’s, you know, that conversation is in the past. That said, the question now is what happens next? He has said that he wants there to be negotiations and Iran is obviously coming to those negotiations now quite weakened from the position it had before the attacks. But there’s still a question of what will those negotiations lead to? And we also saw Trump right after the war ended and he had some pretty harsh language for both Israel and Iran of, basically, work this out already, I’ve had enough.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Right. So it’s interesting, the whole question of there’s isolationism as a kind of foreign policy question, but then there’s the question of how transposable that is onto sort of good for the Jews, bad for the Jews type things at home. Right? Like, not all. Like, there are a lot of. A lot of the people criticizing Trump specifically from that perspective. Like, that includes—not a lot of them because demographically—but like, Jewish Democrats are critical of Trump and less hawkish, perhaps, than he is some of the time. So it’s complicated. Right. So that’s what I want to kind of tease out.
So who are these personalities here and, like, how central are they to on the sort of isolationist slash conspiratorial side of MAGA? So there’s Tucker Carlson, I guess, Candace Owens, but then there’s Steve Bannon. Maybe Elon Musk is a tricky one. So it seems like maybe this all started when the bromance started to fade there.
Gabby Deutch: I think that’s part of it, although I don’t think it’s quite right to put Elon Musk in the isolationist camp. To sort him along neat lines of foreign policy is—doesn’t really add up. Elon Musk—
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Oh, right. I don’t know if it’s isolationist. I mean, I even wonder if isolationist versus, like, interventionist is the framing because it seems like a lot of it does have to do with conspiracy, theorizing and Jews more than specific policies in terms of. Yeah, I don’t know, it’s complicated.
Gabby Deutch: I think a lot of this goes back to Tucker Carlson, and he already was a controversial figure when he was on Fox News. When, however many years ago, he left to start his own show that he runs on social media, and he has his own platform now where he operates and can basically say and do whatever he wants. He’s a voice who always has had a lot of sway, at least in the past several years, on the American right. Now he can say whatever he wants, and he has been very, very skeptical of America’s relationship with Israel. Certainly, that’s a part of it. He’s brought in revisionist historians to talk about the Holocaust and, you know, essentially to frame, I believe, Churchill as the bad guy in one of those conversations.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: And, oh, we will get to this.
Gabby Deutch: Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to put all of this on any one person because there’s much more than that. But I think if we can look at a source for where some of this is emanating from and where you have a permission structure built in, and you look at some of the guests that he’s had. I’ll also add Joe Rogan into the mix, who you can’t necessarily neatly place on the American right. He supported Bernie Sanders in the past, but Trump did go on his podcast last year, and so did Vance during the election, which Kamala Harris did not. Not that she was invited, for the record, but there is a certain friendliness on the right. Joe Rogan has also brought in some very conspiratorial guests who have similarly said some very shady things about Jews and about Israel. That’s something that’s been happening on his show for a little while now.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: It’s interesting because, like, I had just thought about it. I’m, you know, an American as well as Canadian. I’m a Democrat. I had just kind of thought of it as sort of the right wing. It’s like there’s actually a lot more sort of internal division than I’d sort of been thinking about. But I also wanted to ask, so who apart from Trump, are the… I don’t know whether to call them interventionists, philo-Semites, whatever, people who are adamant about doing things in the name of what’s best for Jews in various ways. Would this be like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, in terms of politicians?
Gabby Deutch: Yeah, I think on the interventionist front, the hawk front, whatever you want to call it when it comes to foreign policy—Ted Cruz for sure. Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson last month had a big debate, brawl, or whatever you want to call it, where Ted Cruz went on Tucker Carlson’s show. They really got into it on a lot of this stuff. I’ll just add, kind of interestingly, Tucker Carlson now presents himself as this very dovish, anti-war guy, taking on Ted Cruz, who is much more hawkish and much more, you know, cheering on American intervention in the Middle East. After that interview, you had a number of very high-level people who had worked—very prominent, let’s say, Democrats, people from the Obama administration—who were cheering Tucker Carlson on, like a couple of the guys from the Pod Save America network were saying. Yeah, this is a great interview from Tucker Carlson, which is just jarring because he is a deeply racist person who has said all kinds of things that 99% of Democrats would hate. But we’ll just leave that kind of strange bedfellow situation for a moment.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I want to talk about that though. I do. And I’m going to interrupt my own next question because I want to ask about the sort of horseshoe theory aspect of this. It does seem like there is this kind of agreeing on, agreeing to hate Israel, and to not necessarily be the most positively disposed towards perhaps American Jews. That does seem to allow a certain amount of that. But do you think there is the potential for any sort of larger allegiance over that issue among people who otherwise are just so completely different politically?
Gabby Deutch: I, I don’t necessarily see a big political shift where the anti-Israel people…
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Like the, like the Marjorie, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ilhan Omar.
Gabby Deutch: Right. I don’t see the two of them ever becoming part of the same party. I’m sure they hate each other, but yeah, just to finish that thought on the horseshoe theory, if you will, of the extremes of both sides coming together: Recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene, she of the Jewish Space Lasers fame or infamy, and Ilhan Omar of the “all about the Benjamins” fame or infamy—far left, far right—each of them released legislation that would have zeroed out American dollars to Israel for missile defense. That’s for defense. To find any other issue where the two of them might have common ground, I don’t know that it’s zero, but I would venture that it’s pretty close. I don’t think they will necessarily take up arms and be in the same party, but it is something that we are seeing more of. I’ll just add one more example to get into the weeds a little bit of American politics, but that’s what we’re talking about. There was legislation that Jewish organizations have been trying to pass for a while now called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which was a federal effort to help in the fight against antisemitism. One piece of it was that it would have endorsed the IHRA definition, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which has been widely adopted by most groups in the Jewish world, several states, dozens of countries, and the American government. It’s controversial on parts of both the left and the right, for different reasons. Last year, when this bill came up in Congress, we all learned about another way that this definition is apparently controversial. There were some Republicans who voted against this law and the use of this definition because they think it would deem Christians antisemitic for saying the Jews killed Jesus, which of course, the Jews did not do. In fact, it probably is antisemitic to say that. For that reason, there were some Republicans who voted against the bill. So, different reasons, but ultimately, you still have some people from both parties who are voting against this otherwise bipartisan piece of legislation.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Oh, I think this is all really interesting and also just in terms of zoomed out why it is we’re talking about this. I will bring up Canada, believe it or not, but for now, just sticking with the States. It’s interesting just because I think there’s a kind of safety for Jews in the fact that there is so little coalition possibility among people who are not such great friends of Jews for different reasons. The idea that everybody gets together to hate Jews as their galvanizing thing just doesn’t seem that imminent, for that reason. I don’t know, but maybe that’s me being overly optimistic. But I wanted, though, to return to this question of the people who are kind of not the Tucker Carlson side, whatever the other side is. A lot of that also seems to be coming from the free press, as in the Bari Weiss publication, not as in the concept, the abstract concept. The way I have learned about this rift has been in part from some articles there. There was one by Rebecca L. Heinrich called “The Right’s 1939 Project,” and another by Park MacDougald, I believe, of Tablet, called “What the Epstein Fight is Really About.” These were both interesting, useful kind of background information about these rifts, but also just as primary sources giving the other side of it, you know. What is the not-Tucker Carlson right at this point? But what I want to ask you, though, is which side of this has more power? Because on one hand, you say, like, well, Trump’s President, but on the other hand, he’s not immortal and, you know, there’s going to be a Republican Party presumably post-Trump. And it seems like the really influential, not that Bari Weiss isn’t influential in her own way, but I don’t see her as quite as influential as, like, Tucker Carlson. I don’t know, like which, which side of this rift house is winning.
Gabby Deutch: I want to talk about two things. First, when it comes to Trump, I wouldn’t necessarily put Trump on the opposing side to Tucker Carlson. When we’re talking about Trump, we can’t really put him in a box because some days he’s more isolationist, and some days he’s more interventionist. I think the better way to think about Trump, which makes it harder to draw any big conclusions, is Trump will govern the way that he wants to and isn’t necessarily drawn by or animated by one particular worldview or set of values. As we know, he likes to make deals. Among the more hawkish interventionist right, as we discussed, there was concern that he would make a deal with Iran very similar to Obama’s, which of course that part of the right hated. But now he wants to make a deal again, it seems, to be taking a stronger position because of the war that happened. So, I wouldn’t put Trump necessarily on the opposing side. That being said, when you look at some of the younger voices in the party, J.D. Vance being a very important example, and we talked about him a little bit, there are a lot of questions. Something that people on the anti-Israel left like to talk about, or language they like to use, is “progressive except for Palestine.” So, if you’re talking about a progressive who wants free healthcare for all and supports abortion access and climate change and all of the other progressive priorities, but also is pro-Israel, there are some on the far-left who will say we don’t consider you progressive because you don’t support Palestine. On the other hand, something that I’ve talked about with my colleagues, and the way that we look at this sometimes, is “isolationist except for Israel,” which is becoming a smaller and smaller segment. So people, and this includes J.D. Vance for the most part, where he would put himself—I don’t know if he would use the word isolationist—but he largely fits in that box, would make a carve-out for Israel. That is, I don’t think America should be involved with Ukraine; they can figure it out or resolve it or other issues. But I do believe in supporting Israel. It is really an exception to that worldview. And I think now, as more people adopt that isolationist worldview, they aren’t necessarily interested in making the carve-out for Israel.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Because I think you could point to notions of like Judeo-Christian, whatever, you know, you could point to Christian evangelicals, you could point to all of that. But I think that something else that’s happened that’s newer and that’s maybe—and this is maybe more a question for our listeners than for you. Although if you are here, you’re welcome to also address this: the notion of the way things have gotten bundled where if you’re anti-woke, you’re pro-Israel. And where putting like if you’re not even necessarily Jewish but have an Israeli flag emoji in your bio, that’s a certain stance regarding like the whole sort of omni-cause versus anti-omni-cause. You know what I mean? The whole idea of how these things have gotten bundled. I wonder whether, like, my impression—not being a wonk in either Canada or the U.S. and knowing bits and pieces now of both—is that the anti-wokeness right-wing is maybe more central in certain respects on the Canadian right. Such that a sort of anti-Israel right-wing position would maybe be less of a thing in Canada. Maybe it would be more like that would be more of a left-wing position. Again, if you are listening and you are Canadian, tell me why I’m wrong to think like this. But one thing, I just want to ask you one more question since you are the US Expert. Is there an equivalent rift happening among the Democrats? Because I have mainly followed this sort of US politics in terms of the New York mayoral primary, where it seems like there was some kind of putting past differences and uniting various people with various views on Israel and other topics against Cuomo and gathering in that way. Has something similar been happening on the federal level against Trump, or is there more like a rift underway?
Gabby Deutch: First, just to add one point, on the Republican side, there absolutely is a rift. I think at this point there isn’t a huge rift toward Israel. I mean, this isolationist camp absolutely does not necessarily want more engagement with Israel. But I don’t think that is as large yet among congressional Republicans as we see with Democrats and Israel. So, I would say that there absolutely is a rift. It’s happening on both sides, and I think with more time on the Republican side, it will start to come out more. Something that I was looking at before we came on here is just some polling data. I was actually talking about this with a colleague earlier. A poll came out last month showing the lowest ever support for Israelis among Democrats. 12% said they sympathize more with Israelis, while 60% said they sympathize more with Palestinians. That was down from 34% who said they sympathized more with the Israelis just a year and a half ago. So that number went from 34 to 12. On the Republican side, something interesting was that there is still a large majority who say they sympathize more with the Israelis—64%, almost two-thirds, which is a big number. Especially when you look at that compared to Democrats, it feels really high, but compared to a year and a half ago, that’s down from 80% among Republicans. So it went from 80% to 64%, which are both big numbers if you will. But there is a change happening in that direction as well. It’s not necessarily at the same crisis point that I think some in the pro-Israel world in America see among Democrats, but it is happening, that decline. So, it’s something to keep an eye on among Democrats. Did you have a specific question about Madani?
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Oh, no, just whether there’s much of a rift over Israel among Democratic politicians at this point in the same way. Whether there’s like fallings-out, like if there is a Ted Cruz vs. Tucker Carlson scenario happening on the left.
Gabby Deutch: Not so much with outside media figures in the same way, because there aren’t really Democratic or liberal media figures.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Who’s the last? Joe Rogan was never resolved, right?
Gabby Deutch: Well, that’s correct. There is someone who was floated that way in a lot of profiles, named Hasan Piker, who is a streamer on Twitch, who gets millions of views all the time and is deeply anti-Semitic and sometimes also hosts Democratic lawmakers. He hasn’t quite mainstreamed in the Democratic Party in the same way, but that certainly is one person. But within the party, absolutely. There’s a growing number of Democrats who don’t support even Iron Dome funding for Israel. What we saw in New York and what continues to play out—and I don’t know that it will resolve to the satisfaction of pro-Israel Democrats—is this mayoral candidate who really refuses to disavow the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and there’s a lot of angst happening now among Democrats. Mamdani has a ton of excitement among young people and people are energized about him. So the question is, can you accept things that are positive for the party at a time when people are so upset within the Democratic Party and think that the party is doing such a horrible job? Do you take a candidate who excites people and talks about things people care about, but also is very, very left on Israel, was a founder of Students for Justice in Palestine at his campus, for whom being anti-Zionist is a deeply held belief? Do you hold that person up as the future of the party because on this other stuff they’re good? And I think a lot of Jews really feel caught in the middle right now. Then you have a lot of leaders in the party who are taking this wait-and-see approach to see if maybe Mamdani will finally say the thing they want him to say.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: And I think he has. I have seen some headlines. I did a podcast on the Mamdani topic as well, and I think since then I’ve seen some headlines saying that he is stepping away. I don’t remember exactly the phrasing, but he’s not so into the phrase “globalise the intifada” as he had been.
Gabby Deutch: I think he—there was a—
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Not that he was ever. He was never the one. He was never the one saying it was complicated. It was that he didn’t condemn it. Right?
Gabby Deutch: Right. So there was a meeting this week behind closed doors between him and some New York City business leaders where he reportedly said that he understands why it’s harmful and he isn’t going to defend it. But it seemed a little bit roundabout how he was doing so. I think importantly for a lot of people, at least that I’ve spoken to in the Jewish community, this guy is out and about all day, every day, making videos on Instagram and TikTok and X. Could he say that in a video instead of behind closed doors where it’s being reported second-hand? There are still going to be some questions about what exactly was said. So it’s definitely a step forward, but clearly, this issue has now in a lot of ways overtaken the race in a way that many Jews would simply rather globalise the intifada not be the defining issue in the New York City mayoral race.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: It’s making me think of when somebody will, like, I don’t know, I guess maybe as an opinion writer, I get this more, but where somebody will like DM me. I won’t say this publicly, but I agree with you. Like, what do I do with this? So, Gabby, this has been fantastic. I want to know what you’re working on, where we can find you. I also want to recommend your ARC Magazine feature about a Christian rabbi. Is that the right way to phrase it in Connecticut?
Gabby Deutch: We’ll put “Christian rabbi” in quotes, but yes, that is right.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: “Christian rabbi” in quotes, yes. It’s hard to do with a—well, I just know some of this is video, so Christian rabbi. So where do we find you, and what are you working on?
Gabby Deutch: Well, mostly I’m writing Jewish Insider and writing a lot about all of these topics. I’m based in Washington, D.C., and we have a morning newsletter which maybe for your Canadian listeners will be a little bit wonky on American politics. But if that interests you, I hope you’ll subscribe.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: I subscribe, and it’s very good. And yes, you have a Substack as well.
Gabby Deutch: I have a Substack, which is a new development for me. But to be a writer in the 21st century, one must.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Well, we will put that in the show notes. Gabby Deutch, thank you so much for coming on.
Gabby Deutch: Thank you so much. It’s great to talk with you.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy: Thank you for listening to The Jewish Angle, a podcast from The Canadian Jewish News. This has been Phoebe Maltz Bovy, opinion editor of the CJN and a contributing editor of Scribe Quarterly, the CJN’s print magazine. The show is produced by and edited by Michael Fraiman. Our music is by Frank Fraiman. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Jewish Angle, wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Credits
- Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
- Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
- Music: “Gypsy Waltz” by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective
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