Trump Says He 'Never Heard' That 'Shylocks' Was Antisemitic

President Trump says he's "never heard" that the term "shylocks" has antisemitic connotations. The president used the term while discussing his "Big Beautiful Bill" at a rally in Iowa Thursday night, the Times of Israel reports. He said the bill's tax cuts meant there would be "no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases shylocks and bad people." The term comes from the name of the unscrupulous Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and it has long been considered antisemitic, reports Reuters.

Trump later said he had never heard that the term was considered offensive, the AP reports. "No, I've never heard it that way. To be Shylock is somebody that, say, a money lender at high rates," he told reporters on Air Force One. "I've never heard it that way. You view it differently than me. I've never heard that."

"I think today, it's a term used primarily based on ignorance. But it continues to be seen by Jews as an antisemitic term, regardless of how you use it," Abe Foxman, former director of the Anti-Defamation League, tells the Washington Post. "The president of the United States should know better." Joe Biden, then vice president, apologized after he used the term in 2014 but Foxman doesn't expect Trump to issue a similar apology. "I think most people are quick, when they realize what they said and it's brought to their attention, to apologize and take it back," he says. "President Trump is different. He doesn't apologize, period."