Trump Pleads Ignorance After ‘Shylock’ Remark at Iowa Rally Prompts Backlash
President Donald Trump ignited a political firestorm Thursday after referring to bankers as “Shylocks” during a rally speech in Iowa, prompting condemnation from Jewish leaders who branded the remark “vile” and leading him to claim he was unaware the word is considered antisemitic.
The comment came during the president’s campaign-style appearance at an event in Des Moines on Thursday evening, just hours after the House passed his Big Beautiful Bill. Framing the legislation as a populist economic reset, Trump launched into one of his signature off-script riffs.
“No death tax. No estate tax,” he told the crowd. “No going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases, Shylocks and bad people.”
“They destroyed a lot of families,” he added, “but we did the opposite.”
The slur is taken from English playwright William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, in which the Jewish character Shylock is depicted as a ruthless moneylender. The name has long been used in antisemitic caricature.
On Air Force One after the rally, Trump said he “never heard” the word was a trope.
“I’ve never heard it that way,” he told reporters. “The meaning of Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates. You view it differently. I’ve never heard that.”
Abe Foxman, the former director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), somewhat backed the idea of the president’s ignorance in speaking with the Washington Post: “I think today, it’s a term used primarily based on ignorance. But it continues to be seen by Jews as an antisemitic term, regardless of how you use it. The president of the United States should know better.”
But Jewish advocacy groups and elected officials were swift to push back. Amy Spitalnick of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs took to X to claim Trump’s use of the word was “not an accident.”
Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America also flagged the moment:
Former President Joe Biden also came under fire in 2014 for using the same term during a Legal Services Corporation event, where he referred to “Shylocks” exploiting U.S. servicemembers facing foreclosure while deployed.
Biden later apologized, calling it a “poor choice of words,” following criticism from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
On Friday morning, the ADL said in an X post that Trump’s use of the term is “troubling and irresponsible.”
The controversy lands just days before Trump is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
Watch above via Fox News.
