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Speaking to Orthodox group, Trump earns loudest applause for commuting kosher slaughter exec’s prison term
(JTA) — Donald Trump earned vigorous applause while addressing a haredi Orthodox education group’s conference on Friday, weeks after earning criticism across the political spectrum of the Jewish community for dining with two prominent antisemitic figures.
As he often does at Jewish events, the former president listed the Israel-related policy moves he made during office, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and leaving the Iran nuclear deal. He ran through the points by reading from an article by one of his admirers, Rabbi Dov Fischer.
But Trump earned the most applause and a standing ovation when he mentioned he released Sholom Rubashkin from prison. Rubashkin, the chief executive of Agriprocessors, what was then the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the country, was in 2009 convicted of bank fraud and money laundering charges. His sentence of 27 years was much longer than others convicted of similar crimes, and there was at least one instance of prosecutors in the case making Jewishness an issue, calling him a flight risk to Israel although there was no indication Rubashkin had plans to flee there.
“That gets a bigger hand, think of that, that gets a bigger hand than Jerusalem?” Trump said, referring to his embassy decision.
“That’s bigger than Sholom, I love Sholom, but this is bigger than Sholom, for me that’s the most important,” he said later of leaving the Iran deal, which traded sanctions relief for Iran rolling back some of its nuclear activity.
Trump also repeated the lie that he won the 2020 election, to scattered applause, when he mentioned the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries he brokered in his last months in office. “If the election weren’t stolen we would have all of the countries signed,” he said.
The speech came a week after Trump drew further criticism for saying Jewish leaders “lacked loyalty” in the wake of his dinner last month with Kanye West, the rapper who has gone on antisemitic tirades for months, and Nick Fuentes, a prominent Holocaust denier whom the Anti-Defamation League deems a white supremacist.
Toward the end of his speech, Trump once again rebuked American Jews for not voting for him in larger numbers.
“I got 25% of the Jewish vote [in 2016] and the second time for all the things I did I got 26%,” he said. Democrats “wouldn’t have done Rubashkin, they wouldn’t have done anything and yet they automatically get 75% of the Jewish vote. It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. In fact, in his commutation at the time, Trump emphasized Democratic support for the move.
“You have to treat your friends with respect, you have to treat your friends with dignity and you have to be loyal to those friends,” Trump said, to applause.
Trump’s remarks Friday at his National Doral property in Miami were first reported by COLlive, which reports on news pertaining to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He spoke to a conference of Torah Umesorah, a group that promotes haredi Orthodox education, for under 30 minutes.
Torah Umesorah, which trains Jewish educators, has for a number of years held its annual Presidents Conference at the Trump property. Trump did much better electorally with Orthodox Jews than he did with the broader Jewish community.
This is not the first time Trump has addressed a Jewish group since his election to the presidency in 2016. He has spoken to the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Zionist Organization of America and to the Israeli-American Council.
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US Hits Military Targets on Iran’s Kharg Island, Vance Says No Change to Strategy
US Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles, California, US, June 20, 2025. Phone: REUTERS/Daniel Cole
US strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island do not represent a change in American strategy, US Vice President JD Vance said on Tuesday as a US official separately told Reuters the additional strikes on military targets did not impact oil infrastructure.
The official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, described at least some of the strikes as targeting sites that had been previously struck before and said the attack occurred in the early morning hours of Tuesday.
Vance, speaking separately in Budapest, said the strikes were not a change in US strategy, with the Trump administration confident that it can get a response from Iran by 8 pm (0001 Wednesday GMT) in negotiations to end the conflict. US President Donald Trump is demanding Iran forswear nuclear weapons and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit waterway.
“We were going to strike some military targets on Kharg Island, and I believe we have done so,” Vance said.
“We’re not going to strike energy and infrastructure targets until the Iranians either make a proposal that we can get behind or don’t make a proposal,” he added. “I don’t think the news in Kharg Island … represents a change in strategy, or represents any change from the President of the United States.”
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French Nationals Leave Iran After Three and a Half Years Amid Softer France Tone on War
A woman walks past posters with the portraits of Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, two French citizens held in Iran, on the day of support rallies to mark their three-year detention and to demand their release, in front of the National Assembly in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. The slogan reads “Freedom for Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris.” Photo: REUTERS/Abdul Saboor
Two French nationals were heading home on Tuesday after Iran allowed them to leave the country following three and a half years in detention, a surprise move that came as Paris sought to distance itself from the war in the region.
Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris had been confined to France‘s embassy in Tehran since November, after being held since 2022 in the notorious Evin prison on spying charges that France has said were unfounded.
“This is a relief for all of us and obviously for their families,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X. “Thank you to the Omani authorities for their mediation efforts.”
Neither the French presidency nor the foreign ministry responded to requests for comment on what had been agreed between the two sides to ensure their release.
Iran‘s official news agency IRNA said the couple were freed following an understanding under which France would in turn release Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian student living in the French city of Lyon, and withdraw a complaint against Iran at the International Court of Justice.
However, both assertions were unclear. Esfandiari, who was convicted at the end of February for glorifying terrorism in social media posts, was released after serving almost a year in prison but has appealed the conviction.
It was not clear whether she had left the country, as ordered by the February ruling. France dropped the ICJ complaint last September.
Iran‘s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot on Sunday, confirming the pair’s imminent release.
Macron has criticized US President Donald Trump’s approach to the US-Israeli war on Iran and said France would only help restore freedom of navigation to the Strait of Hormuz once there is a ceasefire and after consultations with Tehran.
France last week refused Israel permission to transfer weapons through French airspace for the war and has led efforts to water down a draft UN Security Council resolution that could have opened the door to forceful action in the strait.
A French official briefing reporters after the release denied that France had a softer position towards Iran and said Paris had warned the Iranians about the safety of their citizens given the escalation in the war.
“I think the Iranians rightly considered that if anything happened to our compatriots, the reactions here would have been extremely catastrophic,” the official said, declining to comment on the details of the negotiation.
French officials have also refused to comment on why a container ship belonging to French shipping group CMA CGM was able to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a sign that Iran may not consider France to be a hostile nation.
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Gunfight Outside Israeli Consulate in Istanbul Leaves One Attacker Dead
A drone view shows police officers and medics standing at the scene, after a gunfire was heard near the building housing the Israeli consulate, according to a witness, in Istanbul, Turkey, April 7, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mehmet Emin Caliskan
One attacker was killed and two others were wounded in an extended gun battle with police outside the tower building housing the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Footage showed the backpack-wearing attackers firing with automatic rifles and handguns, and police officers returning fire and seeking cover, as they maneuvered among parked white police buses near a checkpoint. One body lay on the street.
Shots rang out for at least 10 minutes among the glass towers in Turkey’s main financial district, Reuters witnesses said. One person was seen covered in blood.
No Israeli staff were at the consulate, which occupies a floor in one of the towers, at the time of the attack, Turkish and Israeli authorities said.
Israeli diplomats had left Turkey shortly after the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza began in late 2023, a conflict that prompted large pro-Palestinian protests outside the consulate and across the country, and a deep chill in Turkish-Israeli diplomatic ties.
US ENVOY SAYS CONSULATE WAS TARGET
The three attackers had links to an organization that “exploits religion,” Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said, without giving any name. Two of them were brothers, and they had traveled in a rented car from the city of Izmit, he added.
While Turkish authorities did not say what motivated the attackers, Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey, said on X that it was an attack on the Israeli consulate and he condemned it.
President Tayyip Erdogan said the “heinous terrorist attack” would not dent Turkey’s trust and security. Israel’s foreign ministry said it appreciated Turkish security forces’ “swift action in thwarting this attack.”
Two police officers were also lightly wounded, Istanbul Governor Davut Gul told reporters at the scene of the midday incident, which occurred next to a major motorway as thousands of nearby workers were breaking for lunch.
DIPLOMATIC CHILL AMID GAZA WAR
Turkey, a fierce critic of Israel’s military operations in Gaza as well as in Lebanon and Iran, had recalled its ambassador from Israel in November 2023, and diplomatic relations have been effectively frozen since then.
At the same time that year, Israeli diplomats left Turkey due to security concerns, including the protests. Since then, heavily armed police and armored vehicles have been stationed in a broad area surrounding the consulate.
Militant violence has mostly subsided in Turkey in recent years after a violent spate from 2015 to 2016 when Islamic, Kurdish, and leftist militants carried out attacks amid the spillover from the Syrian civil war.
The latest incident was late last year when three Turkish police officers and six Islamic State terrorists were killed in a gunfight in the town of Yalova in northwest Turkey, amid raids on militant cells believed to be planning Christmas and New Year attacks.