About that Trump order on "campus anti-Semitism"

I acknowledge that when I first saw something about this, it qualified as one of those “just when I thought I was inured to anything this demented, despicable, just plain sick crew might try…” This article explains some things, including how it’s not so unprecedented. And it’s well worth reading in full for other reasons as well.

Trump signed the order on Wednesday, and, in viewing the text, some Jewish leaders have said it is not significantly different than the guidelines issued by Barack Obama in 2010, which provided an expanded definition of anti-Semitism. Sam Bagenstos, a University of Michigan Law professor who worked on the same issues in President Obama’s Justice Department, told Vox, “The text of the EO is really a nothingburger that doesn’t change the law in any way. The key question will be how it is applied in practice.” The application, some fear, could “result in reclassifying campus advocacy for the Palestinians as anti-Semitism—forcing universities to either crack down on student free speech or risk losing a whole lot of federal funding.” To that end, many believe the order has nothing to do with protecting American Jews and everything to do with Israel—which is not hard to believe given that the president doesn’t actually seem to know that most Jewish people who live in the United States are not Israeli, not to mention his repeated insistence that American Jews who don’t support the country are traitors who need to be brought to heel.

The whole thing has naturally brought up a lot of talk about how, while Trump claims to love himself some Hebrews, he has a strange way of showing it, i.e. running wildly anti-Semitic campaign ads, tweeting Hillary Clinton’s face atop a pile of money next to a Star of David and the phrase, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” and claiming that a group of neo-Nazis had some “very fine people” in the mix. It’s almost as though, and we don’t want to step on any toes here, Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, a charge to which his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, says, How DARE you. - Vanity Fair