WASHINGTON (JTA) — Seth Klarman, a hedge fund manager involved in pro-Israel giving, said he would back Hillary Clinton for president because the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency is “unthinkable.”
“His words and actions over the last several days are so shockingly unacceptable in our diverse and democratic society that it is simply unthinkable that Donald Trump could become our president,” Klarman said in an email he sent on Wednesday to Reuters.
Klarman was especially unsettled by the Republican nominee’s warning that he might lose the election because the system is “rigged.”
Trump has also been mired in controversy over his attacks on the parents of a Muslim U.S. Army soldier killed in 2004 defending his troops, after the father, Khizr Khan, appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week and criticized Trump’s anti-Muslim broadsides.
Klarman is an Independent, but according to Reuters has tended to back Republicans more than Democrats, although he donated to Clinton’s unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination in 2008.
Klarman was the founding funder of the Times of Israel news site and, according to a 2012 profile in The Forward, is a major contributor to Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies.
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