Where is the evidence that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite?

Several months ago, after his election victory, I asked for any proof that Donald Trump is – as some of his most mainstream critics were claiming – a vile homophobe. I thought it a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and the only evidence I was given in reply was one gay man in America who cried after the election.  This did not satisfy my standards of evidence.  But a related question now also needs asking.  Where is the proof that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite?

I ask because in the last week there has been considerable, nay ecstatic, reporting of an accusation that the President of the USA is not only fuelling anti-Semitism but has installed anti-Semites at the heart of the American government and is himself a vile anti-Semite.  This somewhat feverish-sounding claim has been reported in headlines around the world at venues including CNN, the Washington Post and at what remains of the Independent. Of course these sites – along with many others in the media – are all currently on the look-out for ‘fake news.’  To which an uncharitable person might say, ‘Physician heal thyself.’

All these stories rely on something calling itself the ‘Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect’ and the bold allegations about institutional anti-Semitism at the White House have been made by the Center’s director, one Steven Goldstein. He has spent his career as a Democrat party activist, with an especial interest in gay rights and if you watch his debate at CNN here one could even get the impression that Goldstein is a partisan shill rather than a legitimate bearer of the legacy of Anne Frank.  In fact, looking into it, it appears that the ‘Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect’ was something of a shell organisation until Mr Goldstein and his colleague David Smith (who, like Goldstein, previously ran a gay rights group in New Jersey called ‘Garden State Equality’) took it over and decided to stand on a dead Jewish girl, the better to be able to holler over the crowd and attack a president they have their own reasons to dislike.

Thus a speech by President Trump on hate crime was dismissed by the ‘Anne Frank Center for Respect Towards People Who Agree With Us’ as ‘pathetic’.