Trump claims Harris would abandon Israel in speech belittling Jewish Americans who vote Democrat

In a speech to Jewish donors on Thursday, Trump repeatedly belittled Jewish Americans who vote Democrat, at one point saying: “I don’t understand how anybody can support them – and I say it constantly – if you had them to support and you were Jewish, you have to have your head examined,” according to the Washington Post.

Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition: “They’ve been very bad to you.”

Donald Trump holding fist up and smiling on Jumbotron. — Donald Trump appears via a live satellite video feed during the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership summit on 5 September 2024, in Las Vegas. Photograph: Steve Marcus/AP

He also said that a potential Harris presidency would be cataclysmic for Israel, Reuters reports.

“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president. And I think you need to explain that to your people … You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president,” Trump said without providing evidence for such a claim.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.

Harris has hewed closely to Joe Biden’s strong support of Israel and rejected calls from some in the Democratic party that Washington rethink sending weapons to Israel because of the heavy Palestinian death toll in Gaza.

She has, however, called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

This is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage.

Key events

Daniel Hurst

Australians have already had a taste of the turbulence of dealing with Donald Trump, courtesy of a leaked 2017 phone call between the newly inaugurated president and the then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

“I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made,” Trump said as Turnbull implored him to honour a refugee resettlement agreement made with the Obama administration.

Turnbull had used their shared backgrounds as businessmen to emphasise that a deal is a deal, but Trump described it as a “stupid” agreement that would “make me look terrible”.

The Trump administration honoured the deal, but the president wasn’t pleased about it – and he raced to end the introductory phone call with his Australian counterpart.

“As far as I am concerned that is enough, Malcolm. I have had it,” said Trump, according to the transcript published by the Washington Post.

“I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.”

Now, as the Australian government contemplates the possibility of Trump returning to the White House, local analysts say his impulses “run counter to Australians’ instincts” and could be “damaging”.

The Trump assassination attempt, the pressure on Joe Biden to pull out of the race, the subsequent coronation of Kamala Harris have all received extensive media coverage in Australia.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s live news channel interrupted Australia’s own parliamentary question time to air Biden’s speech to the Democratic National Convention.

A YouGov poll in August tested Australian views on the contenders. When asked who they would vote for in the US election, 67% of Australian respondents said they would vote for Harris and 33% said Trump.

It’s not just the personalities that have grabbed attention but also the realisation that as a US treaty ally, Australia would be tangibly affected by the election outcome.

Here is the full story on Trump’s remarks earlier:

Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that they would be “abandoned” if Kamala Harris becomes president.

In his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, the Republican presidential candidate also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror-infested” areas such as Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to US college student protesters.

While Trump sketched out few concrete Middle Eastern policy proposals for a second term, he painted a potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel.

Under both Trump and Joe Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From fiscal year 2017 to 2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US state department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to 31 July of this year.

Trump also said US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.

“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said, speaking remotely to a crowd of more than 1,000 donors.

Vance is winding down. He calls on voters to “vote 10 times”, then mocks the media, saying they will report that he called for voter fraud.

No, he says, he means people should “vote 10 times the legal way”, by bringing their families and friends to the polls to vote.

“Donald Trump and I are the only ticket for strong women and strong families in this country,” Vance says.

Vance supports anti-abortion policies that want to stop women from making decisions about their own bodies, futures and families.

This week, for example, the Guardian reported that a rightwing thinktank report proposing sweeping restrictions on abortions and fertility treatments was endorsed by JD Vance years before he became a fervent backer of Donald Trump and then his vice-presidential running mate known for derisive views on childless women.

Vance is asked by a journalist who declares herself to be just about the only conservative journalist there – several journalists have been booed by the audience when announcing the publications they work for.

She asks Vance whether he respects women. Vance says he loves strong women because he wouldn’t be here without them.

He says that the “mainstream media” has repeated comments he made sarcastically – he is likely referring to his “childless cat ladies” remark, for example, and remarks about post-menopausal women being good for one thing, which is childcare – instead of repeating the “failures of the Biden-Harris administration”.

Vance says Georgia shooter is ‘absolute barbarian’ but denies ‘strict gun laws’ are solution

Vance is speaking about the mass shooting in Georgia now.

He calls the alleged shooter “an absolute barbarian” and says that “no parent should have to deal with this, no child should have to deal with this”.

He says Harris’s answer to how to make mass shootings less common is to take “law-abiding Americans’ guns away from them”.

“Clearly, strict gun laws is not the way to solve this problem,” he says.

“If you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realise our schools are soft targets,” he says. He calls for security to be bolstered at schools.

The audience cheers.

“If these psychos are going to go after our kids, we’ve got to be prepared,” he says.

“We don’t have to like the reality we live in, but we have to deal with it.”

Vance says Harris will want a moment during the debate when she can interrupt Trump and say: “I’m speaking.” He says that she doesn’t want to be the vice-president so much as the vice-principal.

A journalist from the Arizona Republic is being booed as she starts to ask Vance a question.

She asks what people can expect to hear from Trump and Harris at the 10 September debate next week.

Vance says he expects that Harris will say she agrees with everything Trump believes now – in keeping with repeated messaging from Trump and Vance that Harris has flip-flopped on policies and opinions.

JD Vance holds campaign event in Arizona

JD Vance is speaking now in the battleground state of Arizona, at the Biltmore resort in Phoenix.

He says that the Republicans are “working hard on making sure you don’t have a bunch of broken machines” on election day.

Election experts and some veteran Republicans have said that Donald Trump and election denialist allies at Turning Point USA, True the Vote and other Maga stalwarts are spreading conspiracy theories about election fraud in order to lay the groundwork for charging the election was rigged if Trump loses.

Twin drives by Trump and Maga allies have echoed some falsehoods from 2020 about fraud due to voting machines and drop boxes, the Guardian’s Peter Stone reported:

Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Benjamin Netanyahu were sharply at odds Thursday over prospects of reaching a deal for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, with the Israeli prime minister saying it was “exactly inaccurate” that a breakthrough was close, AP reports.

“There’s not a deal in the making,” Netanyahu said in an interview on Fox and Friends. His public skepticism came as US officials said they were working on a revised proposal to address remaining disputes between Israeli and Hamas leaders after the weekend discovery that six hostages had been killed added urgency to the talks.

John Kirby reiterated Thursday that only disagreements on “implementing details” of a ceasefire proposal need to be hammered out.

“I’ve heard what the prime minister said. I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with him in a public setting,” the national security spokesperson told reporters. “We still believe, though this is incredibly difficult … if there’s compromise, if there’s leadership, we can still get there.”