In the run-up to the November election, claims abounded that Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric encouraged hatred and hate crimes on the part of white supremacists. The allegations continued after Mr. Trump won the election and if anything grew louder after he took office.
The charges became all the more shrill as Jewish community centers across the country came under a wave of bomb threats – although the notion that such threats had had been inspired by Mr. Trump’s comments was not only pure speculation but in many cases wishful thinking. But the Democrats, liberal Jewish organizations, and much of the media continued to push the story from that dubious perspective.
It turns out, of course, that the widely reported anti-Jewish threats – and bear in mind that all along they were, thankfully, just that – threats, with no community centers or Jews actually attacked – were perpetrated by an ardent anti-Trump convert to Islam and, separately, an 18 year-old Jewish- Israeli resident of Ashkelon.
In an honest world Mr. Trump would have been offered some sort of apology – or at least an acknowledgement that their charges against him were reckless and unfair – from his accusers. But we have yet to hear or see even one.