Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on on Oct. 7, 2024. Photo by TING SHEN/AFP via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh
October 28, 2024
Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, will deliver a major speech on the critical role American Jews play in the presidential election and the threat posed by former President Donald Trump’s use of antisemitic tropes on the campaign trail and his pursuit of unchecked power, the Harris campaign said.
“There is a fire in this country,” Emhoff is expected to say, according to key excerpts of the speech shared exclusively with the Forward. “Either we pour water on it, or we pour gasoline.”
A senior campaign official said the estimated 20-minute speech at the University Club in Pittsburgh Monday evening will be his most extensive and direct remarks on this topic as the Democratic nominee’s key Jewish surrogate on the campaign trail. “Whenever chaos and cruelty are given a green light, Jew-hatred is historically not far behind,” Emhoff is set to say about the Republican nominee. “That matters today because Donald Trump is nothing if not an agent of chaos and cruelty.”
Emhoff’s closing argument to Jewish voters in the crucial swing state takes place one day after the sixth anniversary of the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which killed 11 worshippers in the deadliest act of antisemitism in the nation’s history.
In his remarks, Emhoff will highlight Trump’s purported admiration of Adolf Hitler, following newly confirmed statements from former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that Trump privately remarked that “Hitler did some good things.”
Emhoff will spotlight Trump’s scapegoating of Jewish Americans voting for Democrats, as he has done to other ethnic groups. “It’s no coincidence that things have gotten worse for American Jews since Trump entered politics — just as they have for so many,” Emhoff will say, according to the excerpts.
The campaign official said Emhoff will also point to his personal experiences and deep connection to his Jewishness, and tout his wife’s longtime relationship with the Jewish community. “I know what’s in her soul,” Emhoff will tell Jewish voters. “I know she feels what you and I and Jews across America are feeling today. She gets it. And to tell you the truth, it’s not because she married a nice Jewish boy.”
Last week, at a get-out-the-vote rally for Jewish voters in Southfield, Michigan, Emhoff said Jewish support for Trump is “shocking” and “vexing,” citing Trump’s engaging in antisemitic tropes, dining in 2022 with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and suggesting that Jews would in large part be to blame if he loses the election. “He foments antisemitism everywhere he goes,” the second gentleman said. “He does not care about us.”
Harris and her allies intensified the attacks on Trump in recent days, warning that his re-election would endanger American democracy, as polls show a tight race in key battleground states, where Jews remain a pivotal voting bloc. A recent poll of 907 Jewish voters, conducted for the Forward by CHIP50, an academic consortium of experts in public opinion surveys, showed that 62% of them plan to vote for Harris in November and 31% plan to vote for Trump.
In his speech on Monday, Emhoff will warn American Jews that Trump, “if it suited his personal interests, he would turn his back on Israel and the Jewish people on a dime — hell, he’d turn on anyone for the price of a dime.”
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