President Donald Trump reportedly made some eyebrow-raising comments on Tuesday in response to a recent wave of anti-Semitic incidents across the country.
“He just said, ‘Sometimes it’s the reverse, to make people — or to make others — look bad,’ and he used the word ‘reverse’ I would say two to three times in his comments,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told BuzzFeed after a closed-door meetings with Trump and attorneys general Tuesday. “He did correctly say at the top that it was reprehensible.”
In an email to the New York Daily News, a unnamed White House spokesperson clarified: “He means (he) was referring to protesters.”
Neither the White House nor the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office immediately responded to TPM’s requests for further clarification.
Dozens of Jewish Community Centers have been evacuated due to bomb threats since January. And two Jewish cemeteries, in Missouri and Pennsylvania, have been the target of large-scale grave-toppling incidents.
In Philadelphia, more than 500 gravestones headstones were toppled, Newsweek reported.
After weeks of receiving harsh criticism for its silence about the bomb threats and other incidents, the White House began speaking out against anti-Semitic incidents last week. On Tuesday, a White House spokesperson also told TPM that the President condemned “in the strongest terms” racially or religiously motivated attacks, like the recent triple shooting in Kansas that resulted in one death, an Indian man.
“It looked like it was racially motivated,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote in an email to TPM.
Trump was not alone in raising questions about the true motives about those who carried out the bomb threats. Trump associate Anthony Scaramucci tweeted:
To blame President Trump for rise in anti-Semitism is extremely unfair. He condemns the heinous acts and is eager to find those responsible
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) February 28, 2017
It’s not yet clear who the #JCC offenders are. Don’t forget @TheDemocrats effort to incite violence at Trump rallies https://t.co/uTBFGhI0Kh
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) February 28, 2017
No, I’m saying until we know for sure it’s highly irresponsible to jump to conclusions https://t.co/wynFuUCKyT
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) February 28, 2017
During an impromptu press conference on Feb. 16, responding to a question about the recent wave of anti-Semitic incidents, including the desecration of graves in the Jewish cemetery in Missouri, Trump implied that “people on the other side” were pulling off a hoax to make him look bad.
“Can I be honest with you, this has to do with racism and horrible things put up, some of it written by our opponents, we do know that, do you understand that?” he said, before continuing sarcastically: “You don’t think anybody would do anything like that.”
“Some of the signs are not put up by people that love Donald Trump they’re put up by the other side and you think it’s playing it straight, no, some of the signs and anger is caused by the other side. They’ll do signs and drawings that are inappropriate. It won’t be my people. It will be the people on the other side to anger people like you.”
