Former President Donald Trump’s declaration at a Thursday event in Washington that Jewish Americans would “have a lot to do” with his defeat drew quick condemnation as a textbook example of antisemitism, with both the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee criticizing the Republican presidential nominee.

Trump’s comments, ironically delivered at an Israeli American Council event billed as being about combating antisemitism, come as he continues his very aggressive and often awkward courting of Jewish voters, whose support he often seems to believe his pro-Israel stances entitle him to, despite their century-long history of backing Democrats.

Of course, Trump’s focus on Jewish voters and frustration with their overall preference for Democrats were always a bit puzzling from an electoral perspective. Jewish voters rarely top discussions of demographic groups that will determine the outcome, though they might make a difference in a race that comes down to thousands or even hundreds of votes.

Regardless of the electoral impact of Trump’s comments, he’s showing how he manages to constantly undermine his own efforts. And his words, Jewish critics fear, could send a very specific message to the darkest and most antisemitic elements of the far right.

“It’s the same old, same old: blame the Jew for everything that happens,” said an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Trump supporter from New Jersey who attended the event, which was hosted by Miriam Adelson, a billionaire Republican megadonor and widow to the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. (The supporter requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his community’s relationship with the former president.)

It remains far from clear whether Trump’s comments are enough to cost him with Jewish supporters. The remarks haven’t even cost him the support of the New Jersey Jewish voter, whose concerns about Israel, economic policy, and support for Jewish schools still take precedence over his personal distaste for the Republican nominee. But Democrats are working overtime to keep Jewish voters on their side, as continuing intra-coalition tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza threaten to cleave the traditional alliance in two.

“Last night, Donald Trump once again fanned the flames of antisemitism by trafficking in tropes blaming and scapegoating Jews,” Doug Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ Jewish husband, posted on X, formerly called Twitter, on Friday. “He even did it at an event purporting to fight antisemitism, no less. This is dangerous and must be condemned.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, a liberal group that has sought to tie Trump’s authoritarian impulses to dark chapters in Jewish history, likewise cited the rhetoric as more evidence of the dangers Trump poses to Jewish voters.

“He said that if he loses the election, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with that. Now that’s scary, considering the last time he lost, his supporters tried to hang the vice president,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the JDCA and former national security adviser to Harris in the Senate, said in a Friday social media video. “He’s even gone as far as to not distinguish us by party. So yes, Jewish Republicans, Trump supporters, this threat includes you too.”

Trump made the remarks the same day CNN reported that North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s Republican nominee for governor who Trump has previously endorsed, allegedly described himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornography forum in 2020 and said he wished slavery would return. In the past, Robinson also called reports documenting the Holocaust “hogwash.”

“With this latest report, [Robinson] has taken concerns about his ability to lead to a new level,” Meredith Weisel, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director for Washington, D.C., said in a Friday statement. “Calling oneself a Black Nazi and wishing for a return to slavery is abhorrent.”

Still, it was relatively easy for Jewish Trump supporters to continue to justify their support, even if they took issue with Trump’s comments.

“What I found really perplexing was the main issue, which the event was called for, was to combat antisemitism. When it got to talk of that topic, there were a lot of antisemitic undertones in what he was saying,” said the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Trump supporter from New Jersey. “I’m not saying he’s an antisemite. I don’t believe he’s an antisemite. I believe he loves himself, and he has a grievance [with] the Jewish community.”

The New Jersey Jewish voter is not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter. A traditional conservative who voted for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, he still feels he can trust Trump more than Harris to help protect Israel. His plan to vote for Trump, despite his issues with Trump’s rhetoric, also stems from the Republican Party’s support for lower taxes and other business-friendly policies, public funding for private religious schools, and what he sees as religious freedom for conservative faith practitioners.

Already not a fan of Trump’s rhetoric, this voter expected him to complain about how Jews who don’t support him need to “get their head examined” — a type of comment Trump has made several times before and that the voter also finds offensive. But he was nonetheless taken aback by Trump’s warning that he would hold the Jewish community partly responsible for a potential loss.

Meanwhile, the Republican Jewish Coalition hailed Trump’s speech as a “tour de force in support of the Jewish community and Israel,” without addressing the controversial parts of his remarks. Matthew Brooks, CEO of the RJC, seemed to allude to the criticism dismissively with a Friday evening post on X that said simply, “Blah blah blah blah blah.”

Democrats’ efforts to paint Trump as a threat to Jewish voters’ security and interests come as Trump and his allies argue forcefully that he is the better candidate for Jews.

Republicans’ case focuses on Trump’s record of staunch support for Israel, which included moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and presiding over the Abraham Accords, a series of peace treaties between Israel and Arab nations like the United Arab Emirates.

Trump is also hoping to take advantage of many Jewish Americans’ discomfort with the activist left’s vehement criticism of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7. Mainstream Jewish groups have condemned the actions of pro-Palestinian groups on college campuses in particular, where there have been reports of Jewish students being intimidated or bullied for expressing support for Israel, and sometimes even without that pretense.

Given the association of many of these incidents with a pro-Palestinian movement aligned with the political left, including a handful of left-wing Democrats in Congress, Trump and his allies maintain that he is the more credible bulwark against antisemitism.

“The president’s frustration with the Jewish community is that it doesn’t realize the extent of the antisemitic portion of the Democratic Party,” said Yehuda Kaploun, a Miami-area entrepreneur and friend of Trump’s, who was present at the antisemitism event in Washington on Thursday. “Because if any Jew would spend the time to look at the history of Nazi Germany or look at the history right now of what’s occurring in America, there are stark similarities to nobody standing up to combat antisemitism.”

Pressed for his reaction to Trump’s line about Jewish responsibility for his potential defeat, Kaploun, an informal adviser to Trump on Jewish affairs, downplayed that part of the former president’s remarks.

“It has to be taken in the greater context of the entire speech, because it’s a matter of the Jewish community needing to be better educated as to the differences between the parties and the fact that the Democratic Party has now become a haven for a portion of antisemitic behavior,” Kaploun said.

In fact, while Harris has spoken more frequently and passionately than Biden about Palestinian suffering in Gaza, she is not running on any policy changes, such as imposing stricter conditions on U.S. military aid and weapons sales to Israel. That decision cost her the endorsement of the Uncommitted movement, a coalition of pro-Palestinian activists lobbying for the United States to exert greater pressure on Israel to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza.

For the large majority of U.S. Jews who have an “emotional attachment” to Israel, as well as an array of other concerns, that is likely more than enough, Soifer told HuffPost earlier this month.

“Israel is a threshold issue for Jewish voters,” Soifer said. “Voters are looking for candidates who meet or exceed that threshold, and the overwhelming majority of our candidates do. Once that threshold is met, Jewish voters are voting on those issues where there’s the biggest difference between the candidates: domestic policy.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America has touted Harris’ support for Israel. It has also occasionally helped unseat Democrats in primaries, such as Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Cori Bush (Mo.), whom it sees as intolerably hostile to Israel.

In Trump’s remarks on Thursday, he said he currently has the support of 40% of Jewish voters, an improvement on his past margin that he nonetheless said was incommensurate with the work he has done for the community. But publicly available polling suggests that Trump’s figure is too high.

Nationwide, Harris leads Trump among Jewish voters, 65% to 34%, according to a Pew Research Center poll earlier this month. In 2020, Jewish voters preferred President Joe Biden to Trump 70% to 27%, according to Pew.

A separate poll commissioned by the Jewish Democratic Council of America has Harris leading Trump nationwide 72% to 25%, improving on what Biden was on track to receive.

Like the country as a whole, however, the U.S. Jewish population is starkly polarized along factional lines. The Orthodox Jewish community, which makes up about one-tenth of all U.S. Jews, leans heavily Republican. At least half of the attendees at Trump’s event in Washington were Orthodox, someone present told HuffPost.

A forthcoming poll conducted by UCLA Jewish history chair David Myers and Nishma Research President Mark Trencher, who shared their findings with HuffPost, found that 77% of Orthodox Jews plan to vote for Trump. Within the Orthodox community, though, the smaller subset known as Modern Orthodox Jews, who blend contemporary attire and secular education with strict religious observance, plan to vote for Harris over Trump by a 55% to 45% margin — compared with 93% of ultra-Orthodox or “black hat” Jewish support for Trump.

For Modern Orthodox Jews, who lean right on U.S.-Israel policy but are concerned about Trump’s character and conduct, his remarks on Thursday could make a difference, according to Trencher.

“The Modern Orthodox are aware of the fact that his rhetoric kind of resonates with the white supremacist community,” Trencher said.

The Modern Orthodox community, which may be the closest group to a swing-voting bloc in the Jewish community, is relatively small but has a significant presence in Pennsylvania, which is the swing state with the most Jews. An early August poll commissioned by the Orthodox advocacy group Teach Coalition found Harris leading Trump by just 12 percentage points among Pennsylvania Jewish voters.

Moshe Gruber, a Hasidic accountant from the suburbs north of New York City with a politically independent streak that might make him more closely resemble the typical Modern Orthodox voter, cast his ballot for Haley in the Republican presidential primary. But while Gruber plans to vote to reelect Republican Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.) in a key House race in November, he is not sure whether he will vote for Trump or simply write someone in.

“Trump’s rhetoric has never been too responsible. It’s not great for him to call out any ethnicity,” Gruber said. “We don’t want to see him call out Hispanics. We don’t want to see him call out Blacks for good or bad. We don’t want to see him pull out Jews for good or bad reason. The way he does it is culturally insensitive and not helpful to the national discourse.”

“Personally, I would appreciate for Jews to be kept out of the national conversation as to picking winners and losers, or even worse, being blamed for a loss,” he added.