A few days after declaring the Democratic Party the “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish” party, President Trump promoted the nascent “Jexodus” movement, urging young Jewish Democrats to abandon the party.
As The Daily Wire reported last week, Jexodus is a newly formed group geared toward “Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics.” In a press release announcing its launch, Jexodus laid out its mission:
We are proud Jewish Millennials tired of living in bondage to leftist politics. We reject the hypocrisy, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism of the rising far-left. Progressives, Democrats, and far too many old-school Jewish organizations take our support for granted. After all, we’re Jewish, and Jews vote for Democrats.
Until today.
We are determined and we are unafraid to speak for ourselves. As combatants and veterans of the campus wars, we know the threat progressivism poses to Jews. We’ve had front row seats witnessing anti-Semites hide behind the thin veil of anti-Zionism. We know the BDS movement harbors deep hatred not only for Israel, but for Jews. We’re done standing with supposed Jewish leaders and allegedly supportive Democrats who rationalize, mainstream, and promote our enemies. We’d rather spend forty years wandering in the desert than belong to a party that welcomes Jew-haters like Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
On Tuesday morning, President Trump promoted the group by tweeting out a quote from the group’s national spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko: “Jewish people are leaving the Democratic Party. We saw a lot of anti Israel policies start under the Obama Administration, and it got worsts & worse. There is anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. They don’t care about Israel or the Jewish people.”
Trump has weighed in on the issue of anti-Semitism among Democrats a few times over the last few weeks amid the controversy surrounding Muslim Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic rhetoric.
“Representative Ilhan Omar is again under fire for her terrible comments concerning Israel,” Trump tweeted on March 5 after Omar once again suggested that Jewish lawmakers had a dual “allegiance” to Israel. “Jewish groups have just sent a petition to Speaker Pelosi asking her to remove Omar from Foreign Relations Committee. A dark day for Israel!”
As the Democrats debated about how to reprimand Omar, and it became clear that they would do so indirectly, Trump tweeted: “It is shameful that House Democrats won’t take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism in their conference. Anti-Semitism has fueled atrocities throughout history and it’s inconceivable they will not act to condemn it!”
After the Democrats finally passed their watered-down condemnation of anti-Semitism, which includes a long list of other forms of bigotry to soften the rebuke, Trump declared Friday that the Democratic Party had officially become the “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish” party.
“I thought yesterday’s vote by the House was disgraceful,” Trump told the press in reference to the Democrats’ anti-bigotry resolution. “I thought that vote was a disgrace, and so does everybody else if you get an honest answer.” The debacle proves that “the Democrats have become an anti-Israel party,” he suggested, adding, “They’ve become an anti-Jewish party, and that’s too bad.”
The Daily Wire’s Josh Hammer provides some more background on Jexodus:
Jexodus is the brainchild of Jeff Ballabon — a longstanding fixture in Republican Jewish circles — and an assortment of like-minded activists like Bruce Abramson, Ballabon’s frequent op-ed coauthor. Some of Ballabon’s prior successful ventures include starting the now-annual Shabbat at CPAC and his work on the Republican Party’s Israel-specific platform language drafted at the Party’s 2016 national convention; Ballabon is widely credited with helping lead the charge on changes made to the Party’s 2016 platform that expressly removed any references to or mandates for a “two-state solution” with the Palestinian-Arabs, and overtly stated that Israel is not an “occupier” with respect to its lawful presence in Judea and Samaria.
Jexodus’s national spokesperson is Elizabeth Pipko, a religious Jew and part-time model with close ties to President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Wire, Pipko described Jexodus as a Millennial-centric movement to help “get Jews to stand up for themselves and what their religion stands for.” Pipko discussed media bias and how the casual cable news viewer is oftentimes more likely to hear about President Trump’s alleged anti-Semitism than he/she is likely to hear about Ilhan Omar’s (actual) anti-Semitism.
Related: WATCH: Tlaib Says ‘Islamophobia’ Drove Her Fellow Democrats To Rebuke Omar’s Anti-Semitism