Speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Vice President Mike Pence vows that the Trump administration will make the military stronger than ever, hunt ISIS, and keep nuclear weapons from Iran at all costs.
Pence assured
the Republican Jewish Coalition that he and President Donald Trump will work
tirelessly on foreign and domestic issues important to the group, such as
enacting business-friendly policies at home and supporting Israel abroad.
“If the
world knows nothing else, the world will know this: America stands with
Israel,” Pence told the group Friday night. The Republican administration is
assessing whether to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, he said, and has put
Iran “on notice.”
The group’s
annual conference at billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson’s casino resort on the
Las Vegas Strip has become a de facto campaign stop for Republican presidential
candidates over the past few years. The RJC also drew the entire GOP
presidential field to its December 2015 forum in Washington.
US-Israel
ties stronger
Now, with
the first Republican White House in eight years, the group of Republican donors
and Jewish leaders was among the first to hear from the new vice president.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney introduced Pence. The roughly 500 attendees
also are expected to hear from Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado, Joni Ernst of
Iowa and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina this weekend.
Pence told
the RJC that America’s bonds with Israel had grown stronger under the young
administration. President Barack Obama did not have a close relationship with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and many Republican Jews saw the
Obama administration as insufficiently supportive of Israel.
Pence also
ticked through Trump’s domestic agenda, saying the president had already
brought back American jobs.
“This White
House is in the promise-keeping business,” he said.
Praise for
Adelsons
The vice
president shared stories from his trip to Germany last weekend — his first
abroad as vice president. He’d paid a visit to the former Dachau concentration
camp, where thousands of Austrian and German Jews were among those imprisoned
and killed. He was joined on the tour by a survivor of the Holocaust who was at
Dachau when it was liberated by American soldiers at the end of World War II.
Pence also
talked about his surprise visit this week to a Jewish cemetery in Missouri,
where more than 150 gravestones had been toppled and vandalized. Speaking
through a bullhorn at the site, he said there was “no place in America for
hatred or acts of prejudice or violence or anti-Semitism” and then picked up a
rake and helped clean up the cemetery.
In Las
Vegas, the vice president effusively praised the Adelsons from the stage,
saying that they “in so many ways have given America a second chance” through
their political work in the U.S. and Israel. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave
more than $20 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, making them among Trump’s most
generous benefactors, campaign records show.
“Rest
assured we’re going to keep our end of the bargain, too,” Pence said, thanking
the Adelsons and RJC for “steadfast support” throughout the campaign.
Adelson, who
helps finance the RJC, didn’t openly support Trump until the final weeks of the
presidential campaign. The wariness was mutual. Trump had called his GOP rivals
puppets of Adelson and prompted major heartburn among Republican Jews with his
freewheeling comments at the 2015 RJC forum.
Trump has
been appreciative. At one of his final campaign stops, in Las Vegas, he called
the couple “really incredible people” who have been “so supportive.” The
Adelsons also were front and center for Trump’s swearing-in last month, and
Sheldon Adelson was one of Trump’s first dinner guests at the White House.
(VOANews)
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