Trump says he will have spent $400m to support Republicans in midterms – US politics live

The Anti-Defamation League, which calls itself the world’s “leading anti-hate organization”, founded in 1913 “to protect the Jewish people”, denounced the use of the term “shylock” as antisemitic on Tuesday, without explaining that the slur had been used one day earlier by Donald Trump in a speech in Kansas.

The ADL’s brief social-media post made no mention of Trump at all and offered no explanation as to why the group found it necessary to explain, today, that anyone equating an avaricious person to Shylock, the villainous Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, is using an antisemitic trope.

“The term ‘Shylock’ is rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype,” the ADL posted on X but not its other social media accounts. “Regardless of intent, its use can reinforce harmful tropes about Jews and normalize language that has long been used to target the Jewish community.”

Critics who accuse the ADL of using accusations of antisemitism selectively, to attack people who are critical of Israel, suggested that the Jewish-American civil rights group was going easy on Trump because of his support for Israel.

Matt Duss, a former foreign police adviser to senator Bernie Sanders, the most prominent Jewish American politician, responded to the ADL’s failure to mention Trump by suggesting its president would have been more direct had someone else used the slur. “If a Democrat said it Jonathan Greenblatt would be knocking people over to get in front of a camera to condemn them by name, but it was Trump so it’s just a general public service announcement,” Duss wrote.

In 2014, after then vice-president Joe Biden described people who take financial advantage of American service members as “shylocks”, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director accepted his apology and called the remarks “a teachable moment”.

Trump’s use of the slur, at a rally in Kansas on Monday night, came just one day after he had endorsed Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Monday, ahead of Israel’s elections.

Trump invoked the antisemitic stereotype as part of his defense of the Republican senator, Roger Marshall, a doctor who has been criticized for filing lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills, leading to 18 of them being arrested.

The president began by claiming, falsely, that Marshall had been required by law to take legal action over unpaid bills, even one for just $101.

Marshall, Trump told supporters at a rally outside Wichita on Monday, “was given a bum rap because he was mandated by law to request strongly, money owed from patients. You’re not allowed not to do it. You have to, by law, go after those people.” There is, in fact, no such law.

Turning to Marshall’s critics, including his Democratic rival, Adam Hamilton, who featured some of Marshall’s patients in a campaign ad, Trump said: “they made it like, oh, he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy.”

“If he didn’t make these requests, he would be breaking the law,” Trump said again, repeating the falsehood he based his defense on. “He would have been breaking a very strong criminal law, and he would be subject to criminal arrest and liability,” the president claimed, falsely.

Trump’s use of the antisemitic slur came 15 months after he was made aware of its meaning when he used it at a rally in Iowa. Speaking on 3 July 2025, Trump Trump told supporters that eliminating the taxes on inherited family farms would save farmers from “going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases a fine banker, and in some cases shylocks and bad people”.

The day after that Iowa rally, Trump claimed ignorance when he was asked by a reporter if he had intended to use the word “shylocks” to refer to Jews.

“No, I’ve never heard it that way,” Trump replied then. “To me, a shylock is somebody that’s a, uh, a moneylender at high rates. I’ve never heard it that way. You view it differently than me. I’ve never heard that.”