Trump Refers to Corrupt Bankers as "Shylocks"

Didn't know the term was antisemitic

CNN reports that Donald Trump wants you to know he had no idea that calling people “Shylocks” might be offensive. Yes, that Shylock — the Jewish moneylender from The Merchant of Venice, who’s spent the past few centuries starring in antisemitic caricatures and high school English class debates about racism in classic literature.

Speaking to reporters after stepping off Air Force One early Friday morning, Trump insisted the slur was news to him. “I’ve never heard it that way,” he said. “To me, Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates. You view it differently than me.”

The comment came during a rally in Des Moines on Thursday night, where Trump, fresh off a legislative win in Congress, delivered a rambling speech meant to kick off celebrations for America’s 250th birthday. While touting the end of the estate tax — a perennial Trump obsession — he let this gem slip:

“Think of that: no death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from in some cases a fine banker. And in some cases, Shylocks and bad people. They took away a lot of, a lot of family. They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite.”

Translation: There are honest bankers, but a lot of the dishonest ones destroy families by charging exorbitant interest rates. Those happen to be Jews.

CNN, not surprisingly, caught the remark and flagged it early Friday. The network noted that “Shylock” isn’t just a literary reference — it’s a centuries-old antisemitic trope, long condemned by scholars as a slur wrapped in Elizabethan prose.

Asked if he’d like to rethink the comment, Trump doubled down. “It’s a literary term,” he said. “It’s from Shakespeare. I think people are too sensitive sometimes.”

Meanwhile, famed Stuyvesant Van Rensselaer, a committeeman with the Manhattan East Side Republican Club, laughed off the CNN report.

“The media never stops implying that Trump is antisemitic when his best friend was Roy Cohn. But you never hear them imputing antisemitism to the current Democratic nominee for Mayor, Mr. Zolton Mandani, who actually knows people who have used the term ‘global intifada’ and refuses to condemn them, But you won’t hear the media or anyone talk about that. Mandani gets a free pass. It’s a double standard. And, as someone whose cousin was once married to a Jewish person, I resent that.”

Just across town on the West Side, equally fictional Rusty Rappoport, who is a Jewish banker with Citibank, wasn’t angry either. “I voted for Trump,” he said, “because I’m very active in AIPAC. I don’t believe Trump knew that ‘Shylock’ was antisemitic because he never read Shakespeare or any of the classics. Or anything really. How could he know?”