AIPAC Apologizes for Donald Trump’s Attack on President Obama
barack obama Image by Getty
WASHINGTON — In an emotional apology, the AIPAC leadership expressed regret to President Barack Obama for an attack on him from its stage by Donald Trump, and for the loud applause it earned.
“While we may have policy differences, we deeply respect the office of the President of the United States and our President Barack Obama,” Lillian Pinkus, the newly installed president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Tuesday, joined by other AIPAC lay and professional leaders.
Editor’s note: See Apology at the 45:25 mark
AIPAC’s evident anguish in the aftermath of Trump’s remarks undid the hopes that the Republican front-runner’s speech to the lobby would somehow help bring him into the mainstream.
“There are people in our AIPAC family who were deeply hurt last night and for that we are deeply sorry,” Pinkus said, her voice choking. “We are deeply disappointed that so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with or condone.”
Launching a critique of Obama’s U.N. policy, Trump, a real estate magnate, had begun a sentence Monday evening, “With President Obama in his final year –“ Then he stopped himself and said “Yay!”
Cheers and laughter and applause arose from the crowd of 18,000 packed into the Verizon Center, a sports arena used by the lobby for the first time to accommodate record breaking numbers.
“He may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe me,” Trump said. “And you know it and you know it better than anybody.”
Pinkus said AIPAC does not “countenance ad homimen attacks.”
“We take great offense at those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage,” she said.
Trump’s candidacy has appalled a broad swath of the Jewish community because of his broadsides against Mexicans and Muslims, his insults directed at women and the disabled and the violence at his rallies. AIPAC came under criticism in some quarters for inviting him to speak. The lobby countered that it had to invite the front-runner. AIPAC’s leaders had called on Trump to deliver substance.
Trump’s speech included substantive content on how he would approach peacemaking and confronting Iran. But he could not resist departing from prepared remarks to deliver the red meat that has typified his boisterous remarks at his rallies. In addition to his remark on Obama, his description of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, as a “total disaster” also drew cheers, applause and laughter.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a progressive whom AIPAC was highlighting to underscore its outreach to the left, told JTA that he adjusted his remarks on Tuesday morning to address the fallout from Trump’s speech.
“We must not embrace the politics of hate,” Creditor said in his remarks to AIPAC, after a video presentation on his career and his pro-Israel activity, which immediately followed Pinkus’s apology.
“AIPAC’s commitment to bipartisanship isn’t just about being mensches in the world,” he said. “The only way to keep Israel strong and to build a beloved community here in the United States is to regard the multiplicity of voices her and in our nation as sacred.”
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