(JTA) — Donald Trump won praise from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for not taking Jewish money in his quest for the White House.
Farrakhan, who has made frequent anti-Semitic comments, lauded Trump during a sermon Sunday in Chicago, according to the Anti-Defamation League website the following day.
The praise from Farrakhan comes on the heels of a controversy in which the Republican presidential front-runner failed to immediately disavow the endorsement of David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
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According to the ADL, Farrakhan said the billionaire Trump is “the only member who has stood in front of Jewish community and said I don’t want your money. Anytime a man can say to those who control the politics of America, ‘I don’t want your money,’ that means you can’t control me. And they cannot afford to give up control of the presidents of the United States.”
Farrakhan, 82, stopped short of a full endorsement, however, stating: “Not that I’m for Mr. Trump, but I like what I’m looking at.”
The ADL said Farrakhan’s sermon also blamed Jews, whom he referred to as the “Synagogue of Satan,” for the Iraq War and 9/11 terror attacks.
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Referring to former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Farrakhan said, “These are people sitting in the Pentagon, planning the destruction of Muslim nations.”
“Wolfowitz had 10 years now, to plan how they’re gonna clean out the Middle East and take over those Muslim nations. They needed another Pearl Harbor,” Farrakhan said, according to the ADL. “They needed some event that was cataclysmic, that would make the American people rise up, ready for war … they plotted a false flag operation, and when a government is so rotten that they will kill innocent people to accomplish a political objective, you are not dealing with a human …”
Farrakhan continued, “George Bush, and those devils, Satans around him. They plotted 9/11. Ain’t no Muslim took control of no plane.”
Blaming the Jews for 9/11 was nothing new for Farrakhan, who said in a 2015 sermon that “it is now becoming apparent that there were many Israelis and Zionist Jews in key roles in the 9/11 attacks.”
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