It’s hard to keep track of all the antisemitic rhetoric that flows from President Donald Trump and his followers.

On any given day, we can expect the president to repost White supremacist talking points on social media, host people with ties to antisemitic groups for dinner at one his golf club, nominate someone with similar ties to a senior government position, or offer support to any number of international antisemitic political parties.

At the same time, he pushes an alternate narrative, positioning himself as a crusader committed to the defeat of the antisemitic ideologies that he spends so much time championing. Regardless of recent efforts to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Donald Trump’s willingness to say that “there has never been a greater friend to the Jewish people” is enough to give anyone a severe case of whiplash.

Last month, in commemorating Jewish History Month, Trump had the chutzpah to say that, due to last year’s campus activities protesting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, “the America that its Jewish citizens felt that they once knew appeared to have shifted completely.” In doing so, he willfully ignores what I consider to be his own complicity in spreading jew-hatred. It’s certainly on brand for a man who makes Ronald Reagan’s Teflon presidency seem stickier than hot tar.

In fact, during the first five years of Barack Obama’s presidency, antisemitic attacks in the U.S. decreased by 38%. In the first year of Trump’s first term, antisemitic attacks increased by 41%. Since then, as the Trump echo chamber has grown louder, antisemitic attacks are up an additional 620%.

Let’s be honest, the Republican response to campus protests is not about protecting Jews. It’s a pretext to implement the goal of the political “hard right” to dismantle what is seen as a liberal pedagogy. It’s an education that supports multicultural outcomes and advances ideas of tolerance and inclusion. These ideas have benefitted the American Jewish community for decades.

It’s also one that conflicts with the “Make America Great Again” movement’s tangled ambitions to further some kind of a White ethno-nationalist state. So much for protecting Jews.

Vice President JD Vance shed light on the Trump administrations’ real ambitions in 2021 when he opined that, “universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to lies,” and to, “deinstitutionalize the left,” and “reinstitutionalize the right” he suggested conservatives should “aggressively attack” educational institutions.

More recently, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon penned a highly partisan letter to Alan Garber, the Jewish president of Harvard University. Right out of the Trump playbook, she demeaned former Democratic mayors and guest lecturers Bill De Blasio and Lori Lightfoot as “failed,” criticized Penny Pritzker, a senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, by labeling her an “Obama political appointee” and “catastrophic,” questioned the university’s “acclaimed” status, and promised to rescind all grant money. She never mentioned antisemitism.

How defunding scientific research or denying Chinese students the chance to study at Harvard makes Jews more safe is a mystery to me. What isn’t a mystery is that in our highly polarized society, Jews have become another partisan issue. We’re being asked to support them or oppose them. By scapegoating Jews to dismantle an education system he doesn’t like and undermining core democratic principles like due process, Trump gives unexpected groups, like the “left,” a fresh reason to distrust Jewish people. Again, this makes them less safe.

And when Trump and his acolytes accomplish their goal, don’t expect them to remain enamored with Jews. In 2016, the president promised, “I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” Square that with today. Trump and Republican lawmakers cancelled over $125 million in federal grants for LGBTQ+ health programs, declined to enforce rules protecting equal access to federal housing programs regardless of gender identity, ordered the removal of Harvey Milk’s name from a U.S. naval vessel, and are seeking to reverse same sex marriage protections.

To anyone who feels comfortable in Trump’s increasingly authoritarian system, I suggest a rereading of “First They Came,” the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller. Today, it’s immigrants, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and even the trade unions. It’s only a matter of time before they come for you.

Amos Klausner is a member of the Marin County Committee on School District Organization.