Jon Keller's Truth Test looks at Biden and Trump political ads
Former President Donald Trump claims a vote for President Joe Biden is a vote against Israel. At the same time, the Biden campaign is telling Latino voters that Trump "despises" them.
It's time to run these two through our Truth Test.
"I actually think they hate Israel," said Trump in a podcast interview with former aide Sebastian Gorka. "Any Jewish person who votes for Democrats hates their religion, they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed."
It's an effort to build on the 6% increase in Jewish votes Trump won in 2020 - 30 percent, the most for a GOP nominee since George H.W. Bush in 1988. But while Biden has recently clashed with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu over tactics, U.S. military support for Israel hasn't wavered. Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said, "He's conveying this message of contempt and anger toward Jewish-Americans because he knows that three-quarters of us will never support him."
Meanwhile, Biden was in the Southwest today as his campaign rolled out new ads targeting Latino voters. "For our abuelos, insulin that costs $35 or hundreds - that is the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump," said one. And Biden's campaign manager recently warned Latinos that Trump "openly despises" them.
That's a reference to his campaign rhetoric. "They're bringing drugs; they're bringing crime; they're rapists; and some, I assume, are good people," Trump famously declared at his 2016 campaign kickoff. And just recently he told the crowd at a rally, " They're poisoning the blood of our country; that's what they've done."
But while Trump has repeatedly vilified undocumented immigrants, that hasn't hurt his support with some Latinos, especially younger voters more concerned with economic prospects than ethnic identity who've been trending a bit toward the GOP in some recent voting.
This election is likely to be close, and so Trump and Biden are going to do whatever they can to peel votes off the other guy's base while solidifying their own.
But when it comes to the deep-down truth of how Biden feels about Israel or what Trump thinks of Latinos, maybe the best advice is to watch what they do, not what they say. And keep in mind that in politics at this level, there are no saints.