US President Donald Trump sparked a public outcry Wednesday after disparaging Jews who vote for the Democratic Party as disloyal.
“I think if you vote for a Democrat, you are very, very disloyal to Israel and to the Jewish people, " Trump told members of the press before departing for an event in Kentucky.
"Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat -- I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty, " he added.
The 76-year-old strongly rejected claims that his comments were anti-semitic as scores of his critics have charged.
He held that the Democratic Party had grown increasingly distant from the State of Israel, seen as a close ally of the United States.
His controversial intervention comes in the context of his escalating and very public feud with two newly elected Democratic House members, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
Critics on both sides of the American political aisle accused the president of deploying an anti-Semitic trope that accuses some Jews of dual allegiance.
Amid the blistering criticism of the president, Trump supporters came to his defence swiftly with his presidential campaign chief operating officers saying that there was no greater ally of Israel than Trump.