Trump slams anti-Semitism for first time as US president

US President Donald Trump delivered his first public condemnation of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States on Tuesday after a new spate of bomb threats to Jewish community centres around the country and massive vandalism in a Jewish cemetery.

Several of the centres were evacuated for a time on Monday after receiving the threats, the JCC Association of North America said. Also, vandals toppled scores of headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri over the weekend.

“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centres are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” Trump told reporters.

He was speaking at the end of a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, which Trump said showed “why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms.”

The comments marked a change for Trump, who had not explicitly and publicly condemned the threats against Jews when asked last week. Instead, he spoke more generally about his hopes of making the nation less “divided.”