President Donald Trump's statement denouncing anti-Semitism after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on Saturday reportedly came at the behest of his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who are Jewish.
"It took the importuning of his Jewish daughter and son-in-law to craft a powerful statement of outrage at anti-Semitism after Saturday's slaughter at a Pittsburgh synagogue," The New York Times reported on Sunday.
The president late afternoon Saturday, hours after the morning shooting that killed 11 worshippers, tweeted: "All of America is in mourning over the mass murder of Jewish Americans at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. We pray for those who perished and their loved ones, and our hearts go out to the brave police officers who sustained serious injuries..."
In a following tweet, the president wrote, "This evil Anti-Semitic attack is an assault on humanity. It will take all of us working together to extract the poison of Anti-Semitism from our world. We must unite to conquer hate."
...This evil Anti-Semitic attack is an assault on humanity. It will take all of us working together to extract the poison of Anti-Semitism from our world. We must unite to conquer hate.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2018
By late night Saturday, however, the president began weighing in on the World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox, tweeting it was "amazing" how a manager took out the Dodgers' dominating pitcher and replaced him with "nervous reliever(s)." He also held a campaign rally where he continued his familiar attacks on his opponents, some of whom had been targeted by mail bombs in the previous days.
The president made plans to visit Pittsburgh this week also at the urging of his daughter and son-in-law, who serve as senior White House advisers, according to The Times.
Two years ago, Kushner pushed back against an accusation that his then-Republican presidential nominee father-in-law was an anti-Semite due to a tweet he posted of a meme of Hillary Clinton with a Star of David and hundred dollar bills.
"Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he's not a racist," Kushner wrote in an op-ed in the New York Observer, which he purchased and transferred the assets for to a family trust after entering the White House.
"Despite the best efforts of his political opponents and a large swath of the media to hold Donald Trump accountable for the utterances of even the most fringe of his supporters—a standard to which no other candidate is ever held—the worst that his detractors can fairly say about him is that he has been careless in retweeting imagery that can be interpreted as offensive," Kushner wrote.
Based on his controversial move recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Donald Trump has been hailed as a great supporter of Israel. Ivanka Trump converted to Judaism after becoming involved with Kushner and married him in 2009. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a press briefing Monday reiterated that the president has Jewish grandchildren, that Ivanka Trump is Jewish and that Kushner is the descendant of Holocaust survivors.
This story has been updated with more information on Ivanka Trump and Kushner.
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