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WASHINGTON — Asked about the recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks and threats across the nation, President Trump on Tuesday told a group of state attorneys general that “sometimes it's the reverse,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said of Trump’s comments in his and other officials' meeting with the president.
“He just said, 'Sometimes it's the reverse, to make people — or to make others — look bad,' and he used the word 'reverse' I would say two to three times in his comments,” Shapiro said. “He did correctly say at the top that it was reprehensible.”
Asked for further information about the purpose of the president's comments, Shapiro only said, “I really don't know what he means, or why he said that,” adding that Trump said he would be speaking about the issue in his remarks on Tuesday night.
Saying that he hoped to see clarification from the president in those remarks, Shapiro added, “It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.”
White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier in the day Tuesday, a Trump adviser, Anthony Scaramucci, tweeted that it is “not yet clear who the #JCC offenders are” and linking to a story from October 2016 at Breitbart alleging a Democratic “effort to incite violence at Trump rallies.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said, “That is an absurd and obscene statement.”
The Anti-Defamation League also questioned Trump’s reported remarks.
“We are astonished by what the President reportedly said. It is incumbent upon the White House to immediately clarify these remarks. In light of the ongoing attacks on the Jewish community, it is also incumbent upon the President to lay out in his speech tonight his plans for what the federal government will do to address this rash of anti-Semitic incidents,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of ADL, said in a statement.
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