President Donald Trump stirred controversy by calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a Palestinian, saying, “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.” Trump made the remarks while speaking to reporters alongside Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office. The U.S. president also discussed the Israel-Hamas war, calling Oct. 7 a “terrible day for the world” and emphasizing his administration’s support for Israel. Trump’s remarks have drawn strong reactions from both political supporters and critics.
Trump defends Israel while criticizing Schumer
Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach, or prime minister, has been among the Jewish state’s most vocal critics, including asking the principal judicial body of the United Nations to broaden its definition of “genocide” in December to include Israel’s war against the Hamas terror organization.
During Martin’s meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the U.S. leader spoke in a very different way about Israel, per a recording provided by the White House pool reporter.
“Israel has been under siege, but you can see they had to fight back. Oct. 7 was a terrible thing. People don’t like to mention the terrible, terrible day in the life of the world,” Trump told reporters. “It’s amazing the way people don’t mention that, but it was.”
The U.S. president said that in his position, “you get to see clips that you’d rather not see, but I see clips, and that was a terrible day for the world.”
“We’re working hard with Israel. We’re working hard to see if we can solve the problem,” he said. “I just saw 10 hostages, and they were treated really badly. They were really treated badly. I was shocked.”
Trump said that he asked the freed hostages if Palestinians showed them any kindness. “Did they ever like say, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be OK?’ ‘We’ll give you a little wink, or give you like an extra slice of bread or something?’”
“Everybody said, ‘All of these people said zero,’” Trump said. “It was hatred. It was pure hatred.”
Schumer’s past clashes with Trump on Israel policy
The U.S. president also took a swing at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish.
Trump said that “some very bad things” will happen, “and people are going to blame the Democrats.”
“And Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned,” the president said. “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian. OK?”
“Metaphorically speaking, I couldn’t have said it better,” wrote David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel during Trump’s first term.
Trump has called Schumer a Palestinian before, including during a Fighting Antisemitism event at his golf course in New Jersey in August 2024, when he said, “What happened to Schumer? What happened to all these people? Schumer is like a Palestinian.”
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Feb. 6, Trump wrote that “the Palestinians, people like Chuck Schumer, would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”
