Eric Trump casually dropped an anti-Semitic dogwhistle while attacking journalist Bob Woodward during Wednesday’s edition of Fox & Friends.

“You can write a sensational nonsense book, CNN will definitely have you on there because they love to trash the president,” Trump said. “It’ll mean you sell three extra books, you make three extra shekels — I mean, at the behest [sic] of the American people, at the behest of our country and a president that’s doing a phenomenal job by every quantifiable metric.”

As the Times of Israel explains, shekels “are now the basic monetary unit of Israel” and also refer to “an ancient Hebrew currency long associated with the Jewish people.”


“Shekels” can also serve as “a reference to the New Testament, in which Jesus was betrayed by Judas for silver,” the Times adds.

These days, the term is regularly invoked in an antisemitic context on far-right message boards. It’s possible Eric’s time on websites of that sort is why he seemed so comfortable using the term to attack a non-Jewish journalist.

Um, wow. The only people who refer to being paid off as wanting "extra shekels" are Israelis speaking Hebrew and anti-Semites speaking English outside Israel. Eric Trump doesn't speak Hebrew, so you know exactly who he has been reading online. https://t.co/evuub9L1xV — (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 12, 2018

Fox News hosts didn’t say anything about Trump’s dogwhistle. They also let him lie about the economy with impunity. At the start of the interview, hosts and Eric tried to give the president credit for his “unbelievable” job responding to Hurricane Florence — a storm that hasn’t even hit land yet.

Eric Trump and @foxandfriends praise President Trump for the great job he's done responding to Hurricane Florence. (The storm hasn't even hit land yet!) pic.twitter.com/EL1BVKvNJU — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2018

Despite promising he’d run his family business independently and stay out of his dad’s politics to avoid conflicts of interest, after he took office, Eric and his brother Don Jr. quickly emerged as two of their father’s most outspoken surrogates on television.