President Trump’s denouncement of anti-Semitism after reports of bomb threats at Jewish Community Centers around the country was “too little, too late,” an organization bearing Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s name said.
“The president’s sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of anti-Semitism that has infected his own administration,” Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, said in a statement posted to Facebook on Tuesday.
Golstein said Trump’s statement “is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record.”
During a visit to the National Museum of African American History on Tuesday morning in honor of Black History Month, Trump addressed the most recent wave of anti-Semitic threats.
“Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s going to stop and it has to stop,” Trump said.
Last week, Trump had a testy exchange with a Jewish reporter over the uptick in anti-Semitism, telling Ami Magazine’s White House correspondent Jake Turx to “sit down” and be “quiet.”
Turx later told CNN that he is hopeful for White House outreach in the fight against anti-Semitism.
Goldstein seemed to disagree with such optimism.
“Make no mistake: The anti-Semitism coming out of this administration is the worst we have ever seen from any administration,” he said. “The White House repeatedly refused to mention Jews in its Holocaust remembrance, and had the audacity to take offense when the world pointed out the ramifications of Holocaust denial. And it was only yesterday, President’s Day, that Jewish Community Centers across the nation received bomb threats, and the president said absolutely nothing.
“When President Trump responds to anti-Semitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this president has turned a corner,” Goldstein continued. “This is not that moment.”
The White House later pushed back against the Anne Frank Center’s statement.
When asked about the statement, press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the president “has been very forceful with the denunciation of people who seek to attack people because of their religion, because of their gender, because of the color of their skin.”
“I saw that statement,” he added. “I wish that they had praised the president for his leadership in this area, and I think that hopefully as time continues to go by, they recognize his commitment to civil rights, to voting rights, to equality for all Americans.”
