Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, has become such a target for antisemitic social media users that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued a special report documenting the abuse.
On Monday, on the eve of Passover, the New York-based ADL published a report recording the escalating invective on Twitter against Mr Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who married Mr Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, in 2009.
Most of the antisemitic tweets accused Mr Kushner — who has been made responsible for “sorting out” the Middle East — of manipulating the president and leading America into war for Israel’s benefit.
Many of the hate tweets come from far-right extremists such as David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, and far-right activist Richard Spencer. They used the hashtag “#firekushner” — although the ADL acknowledges that others who are not antisemitic but vehemently opposed to the Trump administration have used the same hashtag.
“No one voted for Kushner,” Spencer tweeted on April 7, adding: “Indeed, many of us voted against people like Kushner having power.” On the following day, Duke tweeted: “We are being brought down from within. ZIO [Zionist] Supremacists are the true enemy of the American people… not Assad, not Putin. #FireKushner”.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the ADL, said the campaign against Mr Kushner “has been driven by white supremacists and antisemites and has all the hallmarks of classic Jewish conspiracy theories”.
The online war against Mr Kushner is being played out against an ongoing battle between White House aides in his team, and those allied to Mr Trump’s controversial chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
But insiders indicated this week that Mr Bannon’s days in the White House were numbered, after Mr Trump gave two interviews in which he was, at best, lukewarm about the pugilistic Mr Bannon.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump told the New York Post that “I am my own strategist”, interpreted by Washington-watchers as increasing annoyance over social media references to Mr Bannon as the “puppet-master” and even, occasionally, “President Bannon”.
The following day, the president went further, telling the Wall Street Journal that Steve Bannon was “a guy who works for me.” He was “a good guy”, said Mr Trump, but he has made clear his displeasure at the endless sniping between Mr Kushner’s allies and those of Mr Bannon. It is unlikely, to say the least, that the president will easily fire his own son-in-law.
No member of the Trump family made an appearance at a White House Seder on Monday evening, breaking a tradition established by President Barack Obama when he took office. Ivanka and Jared Kushner posed for a Passover family picture with their children inside the White House, while Ivanka, who is an Orthodox convert, tweeted of the importance of the festival of freedom.
