Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Related Stories:

• At Republican convention, delegates say Trump is better for Israel in ‘big picture’
• When GOP needs a rallying tactic, better call Saul (Alinsky)

Democrats bluntly blamed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump this week for what they depicted as burgeoning anti-Semitism in the party.

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who chairs the Democratic National Committee, said on July 20 that the Republican National Convention had brought to the fore an “anti-Semitic environment that Donald Trump embraces.”

“The anti-Semitism that is threaded throughout the Republican Party of late goes straight to the feet of Donald Trump,” she said.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz in 2015 photo/jta-getty images-kris connor

Wasserman Schultz’s candid assessment was a clear sign Democrats intend to include anti-Jewish bias among the offenses laid at Trump’s door. On a conference call on the third day of the Republican convention, Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish, joined Democratic Reps. Xavier Becerra of California (Los Angeles County) and Ohio’s Joyce Beatty, who is black, in listing a litany of grievances that also included stoking racism.

Wasserman Schultz included the controversy over Trump’s use of an image that juxtaposed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with wads of cash, corruption charges and a red, six-pointed star resembling a Star of David. She also referred to his reluctant disavowal of the support of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the Republican convention’s shutdown of comments on its YouTube livestream of the convention after anti-Semites flooded it with epithets when the Jewish former Hawaiian governor addressed the hall.

“He shared anti-Semitic images on Twitter,” Wasserman Schultz said. “There is so much anti-Semitism in the Republican Party that on Monday night while Linda Lingle, the former governor of Hawaii who is Jewish, was speaking, they shut down their live chat.”

Trump and his allies have forcefully rejected any charges of anti-Semitism, noting his closeness to his daughter Ivanka, who converted to Orthodox Judaism, and her husband, Jared Kushner, a close campaign adviser.

But Democrats are not ready to let go of Trump’s interactions with anti-Semites in social media.

On July 19, Clinton’s campaign chided Paul Ryan, the Republican House speaker, for standing by Trump even after criticizing the Star of David imagery.

The tweet from the Clinton campaign’s opposition research account, The Briefing, quoted Ryan earlier this month decrying Trump’s use of the image. “Look, anti-Semitic images, they’ve got no place in a presidential campaign,” The Briefing quoted Ryan as saying. “Candidates should know that.”

Trump posted the image, which had originated on the extreme right, on his Twitter account and a staffer scrubbed the image within hours, but Trump later said he regretted that action and would have preferred to defend the image — a quote The Briefing juxtaposed next to Ryan’s. “I said, ‘Too bad, you should’ve left it up,” Trump said in the reposted quote.

Ryan, of Wisconsin, wavered for months before endorsing Trump, and even then did so tepidly. His office did not reply to a request for comment. — jta