While forwarding the smear of former President Donald Trump as an antisemite due to his suggestion that Jews voting against him “should be ashamed”, CNN’s Dana Bash falsely suggested that Trump’s dinner with noted antisemite Nick Fuentes was intentional.
Watch as Bash levels that smear towards the end of her exchange with U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) on Israel:
J.D. VANCE: We have to remember, Donald Trump is very direct here…
DANA BASH: Well, you said he was right.
VANCE: …and he hasn't singled out Jewish-Americans. He singled out a lot of people for voting for Joe Biden and suggesting they've got to wake up and elect him as president in 2024. So I don't think there's any effort to single out Jewish-Americans, and just on that particular question about tropes, I mean, look, we know that Jewish-Americans and non Jewish-Americans care about our ally, Israel. We know that Jewish-Americans and non Jewish-Americans care a lot about these ridiculous protests. I actually have a friend of mine whose brother was graduating from Columbia, who had the graduation ceremony canceled. And that's a non-Jewish person who cares a lot about these anti-semitic protests. So I think the fact that Donald Trump is talking about Jews in that particular context does not mean he doesn't think the same lessons apply to a whole host of American citizens.
BASH: Yeah, because he did say that any Jewish person who voted for Joe Biden should be ashamed of themselves. I want to move on.
VANCE: But he’s made similar comments about a lot of different groups of people, Dana. I don't think anybody could look at the presidency and the conduct of Donald Trump and say, this is a person who's somehow anti-semitic. And I think whether you're Jewish or not, you should be looking at the record of Joe Biden
BASH: He had dinner with Nick Fuentes, who is an avowed anti-semite.
VANCE: Dana, you should look at the record of Joe Biden and recognize that, whether you’re Jewish or not, his presidency has been a disaster for the American people.
The interview started out with a discussion on President Joe Biden’s decision to withhold military assistance from Israel . To Bash’s credit, that particular portion of the interview featured no appeals to the authority of Ronald Reagan.
The interview then shifts to the accusations of anti-semitism against Trump. Earlier, we noted the emergence of this weird reclassification of a shopworn appeal to interests as an “anti-semitic trope”.
Irrespective of one’s feelings over Trump’s statements, they do not rise to anything more than an opinion. Black and Hispanic conservatives get excoriated by the left all the time for “voting against their self-interest”, and no one ever accuses those leftists of being anti-Black or anti-Hispanic, nor do such statements ever draw any media scrutiny. Reasonable individuals are left to won(D)er why that is.
Bruce’s fabrication of an anti-semitism where there is none smacks of media firefighting, intended to protect President Biden not just from the fallout of the munitions block, but from his own recent “very fine people” moment, as well as appearing weak on Israel.
The broader adoption of this talking point confirms our thesis. But Bash adds a new wrinkle, bolstering the fake trope with another event falsely packaged as proof evident of Trump’s alleged antisemitism: noted antisemite Nick Fuentes crashing Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Kanye West.
Bash confidently uttered “He had dinner with Nick Fuentes, who is an avowed anti-semite” as a definitive tu quoque despite multisource confirmation that Trump was blindsided by Fuentes. Per then-NBC reporter Marc Caputo:
Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview, but others at the crowded members-only club figured out his identity.
Why let the truth get in the way of a good smear? The interview moves on to the ongoing New York trial and closes with Bash trying to corner Vance on the 2024 election.
As this interview demonstrates, if we didn’t have Regime Media we’d have no media at all.
Click “expand” to view the transcript of the aforementioned segment as aired on CNN State of the Union on Sunday, May 12th, 2024:
DANA BASH: I want to ask about something that Donald Trump said in- on social media. He said, “what Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful. If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves. He's totally abandoned Israel”. You tweeted that Donald Trump was right about that. So I just wanted to be clear. Do you think that Jewish people who voted for Joe Biden should be ashamed of themselves?
J.D. VANCE: What I think, Dana, is that people should look at the record here and recognize that Donald Trump has actually been really good for the State of Israel. We had peace and prosperity in our country, and we had a very stalwart ally of the Israelis. Now, Joe Biden as president, the Israelis have been attacked, you've got these terrible campus protests with a lot of anti-semitic overtones all over our country, and you also have him trying to micromanage the Israeli response to them being attacked. Do I think it's reasonable to look at this situation and say that if you're a Jewish-American who cares about the State of Israel, who cares about these anti-semitic riots and say, you should be on the side of Republicans in 2024 because they govern effectively on some of the issues that you care about? I think it's a totally reasonable argument to make, and I think that Donald Trump's going to keep on making it.
BASH: You know, historically, the notion of saying to Jews, “you should put Israel first and what happens in Israel first”, and not sort of consider them American citizens first has been used as an anti-semitic trope. Do you- do you recognize that there and perhaps that language isn't exactly on point when you're talking about something that is very, very sick- it’s a tinderbox right now.
VANCE: We have to remember, Donald Trump is very direct here…
BASH:: Well, you said he was right.
VANCE: …and he hasn't singled out Jewish-Americans. He singled out a lot of people for voting for Joe Biden and suggesting they've got to wake up and elect him as president in 2024. So I don't think there's any effort to single out Jewish-Americans, and just on that particular question about tropes, I mean, look, we know that Jewish-Americans and non Jewish-Americans care about our ally, Israel. We know that Jewish-Americans and non Jewish-Americans care a lot about these ridiculous protests. I actually have a friend of mine whose brother was graduating from Columbia, who had the graduation ceremony canceled. And that's a non-Jewish person who cares a lot about these anti-semitic protests. So I think the fact that Donald Trump is talking about Jews in that particular context does not mean he doesn't think the same lessons apply to a whole host of American citizens.
BASH: Yeah, because he did say that any Jewish person who voted for Joe Biden should be ashamed of themselves. I want to move on.
VANCE: But he’s made similar comments about a lot of different groups of people, Dana. I don't think anybody could look at the presidency and the conduct of Donald Trump and say, this is a person who's somehow anti-semitic. And I think whether you're Jewish or not, you should be looking at the record of Joe Biden
BASH: He had dinner with Nick Fuentes, who is an avowed anti-semite.
VANCE: Dana, you should look at the record of Joe Biden and recognize that, whether you’re Jewish or not, his presidency has been a disaster for the American people.
