Peter Baker writes:

In the Oval Office one day last week, President Trump renewed his no-holds-barred attack on the nation’s oldest university. “They’re totally antisemitic at Harvard,” he declared.

Just 10 hours later, he posted an image of himself striding down a street with the caption, “He’s on a mission from God and nothing can stop what is coming.” Shown in the shadows, watching with approval, was a cartoon figure commonly seen as an antisemitic symbol.

The appearance of the figure, the alt-right mascot Pepe the Frog, was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s extensive history of amplifying white supremacist figures and symbols, even as he now presents himself as a champion for Jewish students oppressed by what he says is a wave of hatred on American college campuses.

As a younger man, Mr. Trump kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed, according to his first wife. During his first term as president, he expressed admiration for some aspects of the Nazi Führer’s leadership, according to his chief White House aide at the time. In the past few years, he has dined at his Florida estate with a Holocaust denier while his New Jersey golf club has hosted events at which a Nazi sympathizer spoke.

Since reclaiming the White House, Mr. Trump has brought into his orbit and his administration people with records of advancing antisemitic tropes, including a spokeswoman at the Pentagon. His vice president, secretary of state and top financial backer have offered support to a far-right German political party that has played down atrocities committed by the Nazis. And just last week, Mr. Trump picked a former right-wing podcaster who has defended a prominent white supremacist to head the Office of Special Counsel.

Even some prominent critics of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism on its campus find Mr. Trump to be an unpalatable and unconvincing ally. In their view, his real motivations in using the power of the federal government to crush Harvard, seen by the political right as a bastion of America’s liberal, multicultural order, have little to do with concern about a hostile environment for Jewish students.

“It is hard to see this as anything other than pretextual,” said Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard who has accused his university of being slow to denounce antisemitism and faulted its awarding of an honorary degree last week to Elaine H. Kim, an Israel boycott supporter. “There are valid grounds” for “challenging Harvard’s approach,” he added, “but it is hard to imagine a less credible challenger than President Trump.”

He noted top Trump officials’ embrace of Alternative for Germany, or AfD, the far-right party classified by the country’s intelligence service last month as an extremist organization for trivializing the Holocaust and reviving Nazi slogans. And he argued that Mr. Trump’s order barring international students from Harvard would hurt Israeli students more than anything Harvard had done. [Continue reading…]