The Anti-Defamation League and the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs were among those who criticized President Donald Trump’s use of the word “shylocks” while delivering a celebratory but ultimately highly partisan speech in Iowa on Thursday night.
Shylock was the greedy Jewish moneylender and main antagonist in Shakespeare’s classic 1600 play “The Merchant of Venice.” Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said Thursday in a post on X the term remains “among the most quintessential antisemitic stereotypes.”
Trump used the word while boasting about the massive new domestic policy package that narrowly passed the Republican-controlled Congress on Thursday. Trump told the Des Moines crowd the bill would be a boon for Iowa farmers, adding: “No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases, shylocks and bad people.”
The ADL said in a post on X that it found Trump’s usage of the term “very troubling and irresponsible” and said it “underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country.”
Then-Vice President Joe Biden used the term in 2014 to praise the way his son Beau Biden had helped service members saddled with usurious loans, but he apologized for his “poor choice of words” after being similarly called out by the ADL.
Trump was asked by reporters after his speech about his usage of the antisemitic phrase but he said, “I’ve never heard it that way.” He added: “To me, shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates.”
“This is not an accident,” Spitalnick wrote in her social media post. “It follows years in which Trump has normalized antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories — and it’s deeply dangerous.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com