Just days after American Jewish organizations criticized President Donald Trump’s anti-Semitic remarks in a speech he delivered before an American Jewish organization President Donald Trump added insult to injury Wednesday. At an early White House Hanukkah celebration the President asked an evangelical Southern Baptist pastor who believes Jewish people are going to hell to deliver remarks.

Dr. Robert Jeffress is among the closest of Trump’s Evangelical Christian allies. A Fox News contributor, Jeffress regularly lauds Trump on the conservative cable channel while verbally obliterating the president’s critics.

As The New York Times has documented, Jeffress indeed believes Jews will not be saved from eternal damnation.

In a now infamous 2011 interview, Dr. Jeffress said that “every other religion in the world is wrong: Islam is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Mormonism is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell,” and, “Judaism, you can’t be saved being a Jew.” He also included LGBTQ people in those remarks.

Jeffress sits on President Donald Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board and is a member of his White House Faith Initiative.

On Wednesday Trump introduced Jeffress as someone who talks “really great about me.”

Robert Jeffress: President Trump is on the ‘right side of God’https://t.co/ZccsNcf3Pk

— ANN M RODA (@ANNIERODA282) December 11, 2019

Also present during Wednesday’s event were Trump defender, attorney Alan Dershowitz, New England Patriots owner Robert Craft, who was arrested earlier this year on a solicitation charge, and John Hagee, a pastor who has called Hitler a “half breed Jew” and a “hunter” who was fulfilling God’s will.

Here is the full video of today’s event.

President Donald Trump’s latest anti-Semitic trope is going to make it “much much harder” for Republicans to hold control of the White House in 2020, the former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) explained on MSNBC on Tuesday.

Michael Steele was interviewed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on “Hardball.”

“There’s a long-respected leader of what’s called Jewish Republicans, Matt Brooks — I’ve known him for a long time — this guy has the job of helping get votes, Republican votes, in the community, which generally votes Democrats,” Matthews noted. “What is he going to deal with this baby, this assault on religious identity and trying to claim you must vote your group?”

“You already had the Republican Jewish group come out and sort of back the president up, so you’re going to have reinforcements that way,” Steele noted.

In fact, Brooks himself defended the president.

As I said there’s a significant distinction between questioning one’s loyalty to themselves and their community (Trump) and questioning one’s loyalty to your country (Lieu) https://t.co/fMOgCJgD3n

— Matt Brooks (@mbrooksrjc) August 20, 2019

.@mbrooksrjc defends Trump’s statement: “Of course the president was not trafficking in dual loyalty and antisemitism.” https://t.co/nG6kq3IQFd

— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) August 20, 2019

“What else is he going to do, what can he do? The reality is Trump has consistently put the party in a position where it has to defend the indefensible, to a point where it is so weak-kneed, it has no other choice but to stand next to him, and go, ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, what he said,’” Steele explained.

“The reality for us politically on the right, on the Republican side, going into next year’s election is that now you’ve got one more group, one more, you know, community of individuals that are going to make that conversation much much harder to get their vote for our candidate,” Steele added.

“All I hear is gunfire on 5th Avenue, he keeps shooting people on 5th avenue and he keeps getting away it,” Matthews added.

Watch:

Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers was a regular poster to the social media website Gab, even posting in the minutes leading up to his deadly attack that left 11 people dead.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in,” said Bowers in his last post on Gab before he opened fire on congregants celebrating a bris in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s largely Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

He sent his post to Gab at 9:49 a.m. Police received the first 911 call about the shooting at 9:54 a.m., just five minutes later.

Gab has long been a refuge for members of the far right. Promoting themselves as a “free speech” alternate to Twitter, the site was created in August of 2016 after concerns that Facebook was “suppressing” conservative speech. It gained prominence in far-right circles after Twitter issues permanent suspensions for many far-right accounts.

In the wake of the shooting spree, Gab had suspended Bowers’ account, and issued a statement saying that the site “unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence.”

PayPal and Stripe did not feel Gab did enough to curb the activity of Bowers and others, and cut off their support of Gab. This effectively stifled Gab’s revenue streams: Gab doesn’t have advertising and relies of the sales of “Pro” accounts.

Gab’s host, Joylent, is also moving to suspend the service for Terms of Service violations, giving Gab 24 hours to find another host. They lost their previous hosting service, Azure, in August.

Bowers had showed off several photos of his weapons to his social media account. He also had made several angry comments focused on Jewish people, refugees, and even President Donald Trump.

He felt Trump was “too soft” on Jewish people.

HAIS — mentioned in his final post to Gab — refers to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization dedicated to protecting refugees who have had to flee their homelands to remain safe.

Bowers appears to be an adherent to the far-right belief that Jewish people, most notably George Soros, are funding refugees and other immigrants in order to cause a “great replacement” of the predominately white majority from Europe and the United States.

Gab has called on President Trump to help them in the wake of their suspensions.

Image via social media