First Draft: Trump Is Only Pretending to ‘Fight’ Antisemitism
This administration will happily lie about how its ‘combating antisemitism,’ even as it shuts down programs that fight antisemitism. Meanwhile, the president’s poll numbers sink even lower.
On this day in 1970, national guardsmen shot dead four students and wounded nine during an anti-Vietnam War protest at Kent State University in Ohio. No soldier was held accountable, but images of the killings remain famous, most recently being republished as Donald Trump sent the National Guard to Democratic cities.
Happy Monday; it’s Swin again. This is the first full week of Jewish American Heritage Month 2026, and Donald Trump and his administration are continuing to push the absurd lie that they are committed to stopping antisemitism. This next statement won’t shock many Zeteo readers, but: no… the MAGA-era Republican Party – which constantly acts like it wants to jail the families who hide the little girl in the attic – does not actually care about fighting antisemitism.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we have another scoop for you underscoring just how little they care. Plus, Trump’s polling hits another low, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, oil prices continue to soar, and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche thinks you need to show your ID to eat at a restaurant.
Killing Programs to Fight Antisemitism
Ever since he returned to power, Donald Trump and his top officials have claimed they are “combating antisemitism” – and have used this as a pretext for launching crackdown after crackdown on free speech, immigration, students, civil liberties, and Trump’s enemies.
It may have been slightly easier for Team Trump to claim that it is fighting antisemitism if the administration weren’t also simultaneously pulling the plug on programs designed to fight antisemitism. Zeteo spoke at length with the director of one such program, which lost its longtime State Department funding shortly after Trump regained the keys to the Oval Office.
In mid-April 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Elon Musk’s Twitter that “under my direction,” the State Department has “canceled another 139 grants worth $214 million.” He added: “American taxpayers should not be funding misguided programs like ‘Building the Migrant Domestic Worker-Led Movement’ in Lebanon or ‘Get the Trolls Out!’ in the United Kingdom.”
According to its website, Get the Trolls Out is “led by the Media Diversity Institute (MDI) with the support of six partners spread throughout Europe.” The project has operated in multiple countries, and its programs are aimed at fighting antisemitism in media, social media, and politics. The project and MDI have long sought to push back against various forms of bigotry and hate, including anti-Muslim hatred.
MDI was also a signatory to a 2024 letter urging the Israeli government to allow reporters open access to Gaza. And in September 2025, the organization joined a protest in Brussels opposing Israel’s slaughter of journalists in Gaza. “We stand by our colleagues in Gaza who bravely risk their lives to document conflict,” Luc Steinberg, the head of operations at MDI Global, said in a statement. “We demand those responsible for their deaths be held accountable.”
But the group’s focus on combating antisemitism was so prominent that – according to documents that were read to Zeteo – when the State Department inked its contracts with MDI to help fund its “Trolls”-related work, the titles or lead paragraphs of multiple grant applications were specifically about fighting anti-Jewish hatred.
The organization had partnered with the US State Department over the course of Republican and Democratic presidencies, and the first Trump administration saw the work worthwhile enough to keep funding the project during his initial four years in office. That all changed last year.
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