by Rikki Zagelbaum in JNS
U.S. President Donald Trump is making a “serious and dangerous mistake” by taking an increasingly warm tone toward New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS.
Seeing Trump appear alongside Mamdani at a press conference outside Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence, on Monday was “horrifying,” according to Klein.
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“Trump has praised bad actors like Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi, apparently wrongly believing it will moderate their actions. Instead it mainstreams their actions,” Klein told JNS, of the Russian, North Korean and Chinese leaders.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS that Trump “has a history of meeting with those we consider hostile.”
“He was the first sitting president to visit North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un,” Menken said. “He always has an eye on the political results, but I think he knows who Mamdani is and why those who value a Jewish presence in America so strongly oppose him.”
Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University and director of the international law department at the Jerusalem think tank Kohelet Policy Forum, doesn’t think the meeting was a big deal.
“I wouldn’t read too much into it,” he told JNS. “It’s not the first time they’ve met. Trump is in New York, which is a city which hosts the United Nations. It’s a polite thing to do.”
Trump “likes to meet people,” Kontorovich said. “He’s met all kinds of bad guys.”
Read the full article at JNS
Also published in Cleveland Jewish News.
Photo: Official White House portrait of President Donald Trump by Daniel Torok, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons