‘We See What He’s Doing’: Conservative Jews Torch JD Vance Over Anti-Semitism Answer

Vice President JD Vance’s views on anti-Semitism are being scrutinized once again after a recent sit-down with Scott Jennings.

At the conclusion of their conversation, Jennings observed that “There’s been a lot of conversation in the conservative world about certain kinds of views that have been espoused by certain kinds of people, and they try to drag you into this conversation all the time,” before asking the 2028 frontrunner: “Just for the record, does the conservative movement need to warehouse anybody out there espousing anti-Semitism in any way?”

Vance replied:

No, it doesn’t, Scott. I think that we need to reject all forms of ethnic hatred, whether it’s anti-Semitism, anti-Black hatred, anti-white hatred. And I think it’s one of the great things about the conservative coalition is that we are, I think, fundamentally rooted in the Christian principles that founded the United States of America. And one of those very important principles is that we judge people as individuals. Every person is made in the image of God. You judge them by what they do, not by what ethnic group they belong to. And I think that principle is important. It’s something we got to hold on to in the conservative movement, because God knows the left abandoned it a long time ago.

It wasn’t the first time Vance has weighed in on the topic. At last month’s Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest last month, the VP fired a brushback pitch by the ear of The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, who had, during his own address, taken aim at Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, both of whom have been widely criticized for using their platforms to promote anti-Semitic ideas and conspiracy theories.

Then, during an interview with UnHerd, Vance submitted that “Nick Fuentes, his influence within Donald Trump’s administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the Right, is vastly overstated — and frankly, it’s overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign-policy conversation about America’s relationship with Israel,” as well as went to bat for Carlson.

“I find the idea that Tucker Carlson — who has one of the largest podcasts in the world, who has millions of listeners, who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election, who supported me in the 2024 election — the idea that his views are somehow completely anathema to conservatism, that he has no place in the conservative movement, is frankly absurd. And I don’t think anybody actually believes it,” said Vance.

In light of those comments, many conservatives — and especially many conservative Jews — were less than impressed by Vance’s response to Jennings’s query.

“My favorite part, I think, is when Vance says one of ‘America’s Christian principles’ is that we were all ‘made in the image of G-d,'” mused David Reaboi. “I have no problem acknowledging that’s a Christian principle—but he knows and we all know it came from the Jewish Bible. It’s exactly for things like this that ‘Judeo-Christian’ makes sense, because it’s accurate. I know he’d rather set himself on fire than say ‘Judeo-Christian’  because the Jew-haters he really respects would think he wasn’t based enough. But we see what he’s doing.”

Liel Leibovitz of Tablet and the Hudson Institute accused Vance of “delivering the right’s version of ‘Anti-Semitism AND Islamophobia.’ The same exact kind of malicious moral obfuscation we see on the left. Literally no difference.”

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt concurred, observing that “The right is picking up on the left’s use of ‘antisemitism-and-ALL-kinds-of-hate’ language. The same refusal to respond to a question about antisemitism on its own. This is erasure. It blurs Jewish safety into a catch-all so wide that no one is actually responsible.”

And Commentary‘s Abe Greenwald remarked that it’s “Good to hear Vance rejects all that ‘anti-white’ bigotry on the right” with no small amount of snark.

But wait, there’s more — and from more than just Jews.

Others, however, found Vance’s comments without blemish.

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