Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inboxGet our free Inside Washington email
Eric Trump has reportedly threatened to sue MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for pointing out that he will appear alongside anti-Semitic speakers during a ReAwaken America Tour stop at Trump National Doral in Miami this weekend.
Donald Trump’s younger son is scheduled to speak this weekend along with his wife, former Fox News contributor Lara Trump, alongside right-wing influencers Scott McKay and Charlie Ward, who have been accused of spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and praising Adolf Hitler, according to The Daily Beast.
Maddow made note of the speaker schedule and expressed shock that one of Mr Trump’s sons would publicly appear alongside them.
“I can’t really believe they are going ahead with it,” she said on a Monday broadcast.
Eric Trump took to Twitter the following night to complain about the story, saying Maddow was “walking a fine line” and insisting that his family is the “most pro-Israel family in American political history.”
He also pointed to the fact that his sister, Ivanka Trump, and brother-in-law Jared Kushner are Jewish while justifying appearing alongside the other speakers.
“If [Maddow] or anyone else even remotely suggests I am anti-Semitic I will not hesitate to take legal action against them personally,” he wrote.
However, it appears the criticism may have had an impact; high-profile attorney Alan Dershowitz claimed during a stream on right-wing platform Rumble that he convinced the Trump son to kick Mr McKay, and possibly Mr Ward, off the tour.
“‘A guy with views like this should not be anywhere near your father’s hotel, or anywhere near anything to do with Republicans or the Trump family,’” Mr Dershowitz said of his conversation with Eric Trump. “He is a Nazi, a Nazi — not even a neo-Nazi, he’s an old fashioned Hitler Nazi.”
He said Eric Trump responded by saying he would consider his advice.
“This morning I got the following message: ‘As a follow up, I took your advice … I asked the event organiser that the speaker be uninvited and they’ — because there’s more than one — ‘won’t be allowed on our property,’” he said, quoting a text message from Eric Trump.
The Independent has reached out to Eric Trump and the oragniser of the ReAwaken tour for comment. Attempts to reach Mr Ward and Mr McKay were unsuccessful.
Mr McKay has previously said that “Hitler was actually fighting the same people we are trying to put down today,” referencing a conspiracy theory that Jewish people control the world’s banks, according to Media Matters. He also suggested that Jewish people orchestrated 9/11 and were behind the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and John F Kennedy.
Mr Ward has previously denied the Holocaust and suggested that Jewish people were behind viral outbreaks, Media Matters reports.
Eric Trump has also been accused of making anti-Semitic comments, though not to the degree of his tourmates; while dismissing the reporting of Bob Woodward on the chaotic Trump White House, Eric Trump called the famed reporter’s book “sensational” and said the controversy would allow him to “sell three extra books” to make “three extra shekels,” according to the Times of Isreal.
Jonathan Weissman, the Washington deputy editor of The New York Times, said the comment was “outrageous.”
“If you want to see how the neo-Nazis use the term ‘shekels’ take a quick glance at The Daily Stormer,” he tweeted. “Eric Trump’s ‘three extra shekels’ attack on Bob Woodward is not some accident any more than Hillary Clinton’s image over a Star of Da.”
Conservative writer and Trump critic Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the Weekly Standard, also called out Eric Trump for the comment.
“Eric Trump said this morning that Bob Woodward made ‘three extra shekels at the behest of the American people’ with his book,” he wrote on Twitter. “Is Eric too stupid to know he’s being anti-Semitic?”
