Donald Trump used a controversial term on Thursday evening, “Shylock”, to talk about the usurers during a gathering in the Iowa (center), before then not knowing the anti -Semitation connotation of the word.
“No death tax. No tax on successions. No need to go and see the banks and borrow from some cases of a good banker and, in some cases, “Shylocks” and bad people, “said the American president, who savor the success of the adoption of his budgetary law on the occasion of the launch of the 250th anniversary of the United States.
Questioned later on his plane descend on the anti -Semitation connotation of the term, Donald Trump replied: “I have never heard it in this way”.
“The sense of the term” Shylock “is someone who lends money at high rates. You see it differently. I have never heard that, ”he added.
The word “shylock” has its origin in a famous character in Shakespeare’s play The Venice merchant. The bad Shylock, a rich Jewish usurier, has since become one of the most sustainable incarnations of anti -Semitic prejudices. The term has also become a synonym for business shark.
His predecessor Joe Biden, who was then only vice-president, had to apologize in 2014 for having employed the same term, recognizing “a choice of unfortunate words”.
Abraham Foxman, Director of Anti-Deformation League, an organization of fighting anti-Semitism, had denounced a “stereotype on the Jews deeply rooted in society” at the time.
In September, before his election, Donald Trump promised to face “the horrible wave of anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas” in the United States, presenting himself as a “defender, protector” of American Jews.
His administration waged a battle against universities accused of having enabled Propaletinian demonstrations on their campus.
