Last fall, Stephen Miller encouraged the president to focus his midterm message on the threat posed by a caravan of Central American migrants. Trump proceeded to tell supporters that this caravan was an “invasion,” that “the Democrats had something to do with it,” and that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the Jewish billionaire George Soros was financing this “invasion” in an attempt to rig the midterm elections.

Lee Zeldin did not object to these remarks. In his view, it was not anti-Semitic (or even irresponsible) for the president to suggest that a wealthy Jew was orchestrating an invasion of the United States, using nonwhite immigrants as his shock troops — even though the president was saying such things just days after a neo-Nazi had murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue because he believed that Jews were orchestrating an invasion of the United States, using nonwhite immigrants as their shock troops. Instead, Zeldin chose to demonstrate his solidarity with American Jews last fall by inviting Steve Bannon to headline one of his campaign events.

It is worth noting that even if Trump’s revanchist nativism didn’t contain traces of anti-Semitism, it would remain a form of politics that endangers Diaspora Jews. Jewish reactionaries like Stephen Miller might be able to assimilate to the form of Americanism that Trump champions. But the vast majority of American Jews are liberal, cosmopolitan, and secularist. Which is to say: They are the “globalist” villains in Trumpism’s Manichaean fable of American decline.

And even if Trump’s politics did not endanger Jews, anyone who has ever uttered “never again” in earnest would still be obliged to oppose him. If you are a Jew who has “zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism — but infinite tolerance for a president who describes immigrants as an “infestation,” and directs extrajudicial cruelty at their children — then you aren’t so different from the Nazis’ apologists. You share their conviction that some populations are entitled to basic rights, while others are not.

chunter in British
(ˈtʃʌntə ) or chunner (ˈtʃʌnə )
verb
(intransitive; often foll by on) British informal
to mutter or grumble incessantly in a meaningless fashion

Sir William Cash
Absolutely; the idea of our subjecting ourselves to the European Council as well as to the European Parliament is about as humiliating as anybody could imagine. I suppose we are not supposed to say this but it happens to be true: we saved Europe twice in the last 100 years, yet we are now, as a result of this withdrawal agreement and these provisions, subjugating ourselves to the decisions taken by 27 other member states by majority vote.

9.00 pm

I see that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman is chuntering. Perhaps he would like to come to the Dispatch Box and make his point. No, he is not going to, because he cannot understand what I am talking about, because he has not actually got the competence to do so.

There was a Polish nationalist demostration in Foley Square today that denied any Polish complicity with the Holocaust.

One demonstrator waved a dollar bill to taunt Jewish counterprotesters

Theresa May is being advised by constitutional legal experts that she can ask Queen Elizabeth to refuse to grant royal assent to (soft) Brexit legislation put forward by Parliament.

But two leading constitutional experts have warned that the government has the right to ask the Queen to refuse to give royal assent to any bill forced on the government by backbenchers.

A paper passed to No 10 yesterday warns that attempts by backbenchers to seize power from the government will “provoke damaging institutional conflict” and “may prompt the government to respond with countermeasures”.

The document, written by Sir Stephen Laws QC, a former first parliamentary counsel — the government’s most senior lawyer on constitutional matters — and Professor Richard Ekins, head of the think tank Policy Exchange’s judicial power project, reads: “The process of royal assent has become a formality, but if legislation would otherwise be passed by an abuse of constitutional process . . . the government might plausibly decide to advise Her Majesty not to assent to the bill” — though it would be preferable for MPs not to force the matter.

Senior government sources said such a nuclear option would be difficult since the Queen is supposed to be above politics. But May’s advisers acknowledged that she is facing an almost impossible situation this week.