Trump News Today: Antisemitism ‘Like Germany in 1938’

The trump news today centres on a striking historical comparison from President Donald Trump, who said antisemitism in the United States has reached levels “like Germany in 1938,” at the beginning of the Holocaust. The president made the remark to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who asked about the recent rise in antisemitism and what his administration is doing to combat it. The comparison lands only days after the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom widely seen as the start of the Holocaust, and it has set off a fresh debate in Washington about the scale of the problem and what the government should do about it.

The interview was one of the most closely watched moments in the donald trump latest news cycle this week, not because the president broke new policy ground, but because of the history he chose to invoke. Comparisons to Nazi Germany are among the most charged in American public life, and they are rarely made by a sitting president about conditions inside the United States itself. The White House has made the fight against antisemitism one of the signature themes of the second Trump administration, and the president’s own words now sit at the centre of that effort.

What Trump Said on the Hugh Hewitt Show

Hewitt asked the president about the recent rise in antisemitism in the United States and what his administration is doing to combat it. Trump answered by saying he was astonished by what he is seeing, and reached for a historical parallel.

“I’m amazed to see it,” Trump said. “This is like Germany in 1938 or whatever. It’s, like, crazy what’s going on. When you look at the attacks on people, the racial attacks and the attacks, they’re, I guess, 57 percent on Jewish people, and you wouldn’t believe it.”

C-SPAN posted the clip on social media on November 12, 2026, and it spread quickly through trump news coverage. The figure Trump cited, about 57 percent, was presented in his own words as an estimate, and it sits alongside official data that paints a similar picture of the scale of the problem, even if the precise numbers differ. The president’s point was an expression of alarm: that attacks on Jewish people now make up a share of religious hate crime he finds shocking.

What made the moment land with such force was the timing. Trump spoke only days after the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, when Nazi mobs burned synagogues, smashed Jewish-owned shops and homes, and murdered Jews across Germany and Austria.

The Numbers Behind the Claim

The data behind the president’s alarm is real, and it comes from the government’s own crime reporting. According to FBI statistics, 63 percent of all religion-based hate crimes recorded in the United States last year targeted Jewish people. In 2024, the figure was 70 percent. Those numbers describe the share of religiously motivated hate crime aimed at Jews, a small fraction of the American population, and they have long been cited as evidence that antisemitism is a disproportionate problem.

The figures also help explain why the president’s remark, however startling in its framing, found an audience that recognised the underlying trend. The Anti-Defamation League and other groups that track antisemitic incidents have documented a sustained increase over more than a decade, and the FBI’s hate crime data tells the same story from a different angle. The two sets of numbers measure different things, but they point in the same direction. Antisemitic incidents have risen sharply, and they have stayed high.

That persistence is what makes the current moment different from earlier spikes. In past years, surges often followed a particular event and then fell back. In recent years, the elevated level has become the new baseline, and the organisations that monitor the trend say the threat has broadened, from online harassment and vandalism to physical assaults and attacks on synagogues. It is that persistence that has made the issue a central concern in us politics.

Why 1938 Carries Such Weight

To understand why the year 1938 carries such weight, it helps to recall what happened in Germany that year. Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, took place on November 9 and 10, 1938, when Nazi paramilitaries and civilians attacked Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues across Germany and Austria. Hundreds of synagogues were burned and thousands of Jewish-owned shops destroyed. The pogrom followed years of boycotts and legal persecution, but it marked the moment when the regime’s campaign moved to open violence.

Historians often describe Kristallnacht as the beginning of the Holocaust, not because the mass murder began that night, but because it was the point at which the direction of travel became unmistakable. The violence was public and state-sanctioned, and it was followed by further measures that stripped Jews of what remained of their property, their livelihoods and their legal standing. That is why the year has become a touchstone in debates about antisemitism, and why invoking it is never a neutral act. For supporters of the president’s framing, the warning signs are visible now. For critics, reaching for the most extreme analogy in history can flatten the differences between eras.

A Decade of Rising Incidents

The rise Trump described did not begin in the last year or two. The Anti-Defamation League and other groups have tracked an increase in antisemitic incidents in the United States for more than a decade, dating back to the end of Barack Obama’s second term in 2016, the year Trump was first elected president. That timeline matters, because the increase predates any single administration.

The rise continued through Trump’s first term, which saw the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. In October 2018, a gunman opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 Jewish worshippers. The attack shocked the country and became a grim landmark, a reminder that the threat was not abstract or distant but capable of reaching into a house of worship on a Saturday morning.

The number of antisemitic incidents spiked even further following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed, during the administration of former president Joe Biden. The surge was visible within weeks, and it did not fade. Incidents remained at historically high levels, driven in part by the conflict in the Middle East and the polarisation it produced, including on university campuses, where protests over Israel became a flashpoint.

The Obama Claim and the Record

Trump did not only describe the present. He also offered an account of how the country got here. The president claimed the rise in antisemitism “started, I would say, during Barack Hussein Obama’s run,” placing the beginning of the increase in the years when Obama was president.

The record, as documented by the organisations that track these incidents, tells a more complicated story. The Anti-Defamation League and other groups have indeed tracked an increase dating back to the end of Obama’s second term in 2016, which means the upward trend was already under way as Obama left office. But the increase did not stop there. It continued through Trump’s first term, through the Biden administration, and into the present day, rising after the October 7 attacks and remaining at historically high levels. In other words, the trend spans three presidencies and a decade of American life.

The Campus Crackdown: Harvard and the Funding Fight

When Hewitt pressed Trump on how he is combating anti-Jewish discrimination, the president pointed to his administration’s efforts to pressure universities to crack down on antisemitism, particularly around campus protests against Israel. It is the centrepiece of the trump administration’s approach to the issue.

The administration has pursued campus antisemitism in certain cases by withholding research funding from universities it says have failed to protect Jewish students, and by reaching cash settlements with institutions it accused of tolerating discrimination. Trump described the financial consequences in blunt terms, saying universities are “paying tremendous awards, colleges, for what they’ve done, because they’re antisemitic. Harvard’s antisemitic. And they’re big prices for what they’ve done.” Harvard University, one of the most prominent targets of the campaign, has become the symbol of the fight.

The campus campaign did not begin with the Hewitt interview. In January 2025, Trump issued an executive order requiring new measures for combating antisemitism, one of a series of trump executive orders in the opening weeks of his second term. The Justice Department then launched a multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, giving the effort an institutional home across the federal government. Together, the order and the task force made campus antisemitism a federal priority backed by the power of the purse.

A Community Divided

The crackdowns have split American Jews, and that division is one of the most striking features of the current moment. Some have expressed appreciation for the fight against campus antisemitism, welcoming a president willing to use the power of the federal government to protect Jewish students and to hold universities to account. For those supporters, the administration’s willingness to act forcefully is long overdue, and the settlements and policy changes speak for themselves.

Others have raised concern about pulling research funds, about the precedent set by using federal money to pressure universities, and about appearing to make antisemitism a partisan issue. For these critics, a fight conducted in partisan terms risks dividing the coalition needed to defeat antisemitism. The disagreement is not about whether antisemitism is a serious problem, but about how to fight it. The same split was on display this week in the reaction to the appointment of Stephen Miller as the next White House chief of staff, hailed by conservative Jewish groups as a safeguard against antisemitism and criticised by liberal groups who warned it could reinforce the administration’s normalisation of extremism.

What Happens Next

The immediate question is what follows from the president’s words. The remark itself changes no policy, and the administration’s campaign against campus antisemitism was already under way before the Hewitt interview. But presidential language sets the terms of the debate. It raises the stakes and makes it harder for anyone to treat the problem as routine.

In the coming days, the focus will fall on the campus campaign, where the administration’s use of funding freezes and settlements will continue to be tested in negotiations with universities and, potentially, in the courts, and on the work of the Justice Department’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. Whether the comparison is remembered as a warning that was heeded, or as an analogy that was overused, will depend on what happens next, and on the willingness of Americans across the political divide to treat antisemitism as a shared problem rather than a partisan one. For now, the president has made his view clear, in language no one is likely to forget.

Source: The Times of Israel