President Trump used an antisemitic trope while defending Senator Roger Marshall at a rally on Monday in Park City, Kansas. Trump said opponents unfairly called the senator a "Shylock-type guy" for suing patients over unpaid medical bills. The Anti-Defamation League noted that the term reinforces harmful stereotypes about Jewish people.
President Trump said that opponents of Senator Roger Marshall had unfairly cast him as "some kind of a Shylock-type guy." Mr. Trump used the same slur last year at a rally in Iowa.
President Trump invoked a centuries-old antisemitic trope to defend the aggressive debt-collecting tactics of Senator Roger Marshall, the first-term Republican fighting for re-election in Kansas, before the senator began his political career.
At a rally on Monday with Mr. Marshall in Park City, Kan., the president said Mr. Marshall's opponents had unfairly cast him as "some kind of a Shylock-type guy," an apparent reference to recent reporting by The New York Times that revealed that Mr. Marshall had filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding medical bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist. Mr. Marshall, The Times reported, routinely charged an 18 percent annual interest rate and also garnished patients' paychecks and bank accounts. Mr. Trump did not mention The Times by name.
Shylock is the name of the Jewish moneylender from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." The character, who demands a pound of human flesh as collateral for a loan, has become shorthand for antisemitic representations of avarice and usury.
At the rally, Mr. Trump sought to make the case that Mr. Marshall had been following the law.
"He's a fine person," Mr. Trump said of Mr. Marshall, who is not Jewish. "And he was given a bum rap because he was mandated by law to request, strongly, money owed from patients. You're not allowed not to do it. You have to, by law, go after those people. And they made it like, 'Oh, he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy.'"
Doctors have wide discretion on how to handle unpaid bills and are not required by law to sue patients or involve debt collectors.
"The term 'Shylock' is rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype," the Anti-Defamation League wrote Tuesday on social media, after The Times reached out to the Jewish advocacy group for comment on Mr. Trump's remarks. "Regardless of intent, its use can reinforce harmful tropes about Jews and normalize language that has long been used to target the Jewish community."
Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.