Sid Rosenberg was anxious, despite his decades speaking to the public, as he prepared to take the stage at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday.
“I was nervous, 100%, when I was about halfway down the red carpet, walking closer and closer to the podium and the microphone,” the conservative talk radio host said on Monday.
The nerves had been building for days but dissipated as he took the stage, he said.
“Then it just became, hey, let me get this message out there — the Jewish people, Hillary Clinton, the Nazis, Democratic party as a whole, and what I think about Donald Trump, which is, of course, I think the world about Donald Trump,” said Rosenberg, whose “Sid and Friends in the Morning” airs on WABC and streams online.
In the speech that followed —part of an event that many critics and mainstream news outlets called “offensive,” “misogynistic, bigoted and crude” and “racist” — Rosenberg weaved those ideas into a tirade. His speech also included a joke about Democrats’ comparisons of the event to an infamous Nazi rally at the same venue in 1939.
“Out of character for me to speak at a Nazi rally. I was just in Israel but I took the gig,” Rosenberg joked, mocking comments made by Clinton.
“She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh?” Rosenberg continued. “What a sick son of a bitch. The whole f—ing party. A bunch of degenerates. Lowlives, Jew-haters, and lowlives. Every one of ’em. Every one of ’em.”
Although a harsh joke about Puerto Rico by the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe drew the most ire (and a disavowal from the Trump campaign) that night, Rosenberg’s remarks also drew attention.
On Monday, the liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow specifically compared Rosenberg’s comments about “f—ing illegals” in New York being put up in “five-star hotels” to a speech at the 1939 rally complaining about Jewish refugees who, the speaker claimed, “have more of this world’s goods than you or I will ever possess.”
Another response also emerged on social media, among viewers who perhaps wouldn’t usually be seen at a Trump rally.
“Who is this and why is he so unhinged?” tweeted the liberal writer Molly Jong-Fast about Rosenberg.
The answer, according to both Rosenberg and his critics: a longtime shock jock who built a career alongside the infamous Don Imus; who has faced consequences for overstepping the bounds of propriety in the past; and who gives voice to a minority of Jewish voters who support Trump, rejecting accusations that their candidate abides antisemitism and arguing that he is in fact – as yard signs in Orthodox neighborhoods have begun proclaiming – “good for the Jews.”
Support the New York Jewish Week
Our nonprofit newsroom depends on readers like you. Make a donation now to support independent Jewish journalism in New York.
He is also a prominent avatar for a certain type of American Jew: one whose Jewish identity was turbocharged by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He has in the past year increasingly used his platform to air his conservative pro-Israel message.
Rosenberg, 57, started broadcasting in 1997 and has worked for leading radio stations in New York and Florida. He has publicly discussed overcoming addiction and managing bipolar disorder, and he has landed in hot water in the past due to legal troubles and off-color jokes. Imus briefly fired him in 2001 when he made racist jokes about Venus and Serena Williams, the Black tennis phenoms, then fired him again in 2005 after he joked about the singer Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer diagnosis. (Rosenberg still called in.) In between, MSNBC, which aired a portion of the show at the time, apologized after Rosenberg called Palestinians “stinking animals” and advocated for them to be bombed. He bounced between shows for more than a decade afterward.
Rosenberg and broadcaster Bernard McGuirk launched their program “Bernie and Sid in the Morning” in 2018, becoming the top-rated morning radio show in New York City. After McGuirk passed away from prostate cancer in 2022, the show continued as “Sid and Friends.”
It was through his radio career that Rosenberg first encountered Trump — but the Republican did not win his vote in 2016.
“I’ve known Trump for many, many years. He would come on the show, talk about Mike Tyson,” he said. Regarding the 2016 election, he added, “I never really considered him a legitimate presidential candidate.”
In fact, Rosenberg was not always a Republican. He says he grew up “kind of Democratic” in a Brooklyn Jewish family and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, despite having reservations about her candidacy. It took only about a month, he said, before he decided he had made a “major mistake” voting for Clinton and that Trump was “special.” Since then, he said, his support for Trump has been rock-solid.
Sid Rosenberg speaks to residents at a rally against the housing of migrants at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, Sept. 14, 2023 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Rosenberg’s political transformation was followed this year by a Jewish one. He grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn, in a household that was “somewhere between Reform and Conservative” and attended Jewish schools in elementary school and part of high school. He married his wife, Danielle, who is Jewish, in 1992, and both of his children went to supplementary Hebrew school, but while the family attended synagogue on some holidays and had Passover seders, they were not “overly religious,” he said.
That all changed after Hamas’ attack on Israel. The day after the attack, a Sunday, he was getting ready to watch an NFL game in his favorite living room chair, went down to make an early morning coffee, and broke down.
“October the 7th changed me,” he recalled. “I just started to cry. And I was like, ‘Man, I don’t care about the game. I don’t care about really anything at this point. I’m just destroyed.”
Rosenberg posted an emotional video on Instagram, expressing his “profound sense of sadness” over the Israeli victims, calling on his viewers to pray for Israel and blaming Democrats, saying the Biden administration’s policies toward Iran had allowed the attack.
“I hate to make it about politics but let’s get right to the truth,” he said in the video. Then, foreshadowing an argument that Trump himself would make repeatedly, he said, “I can’t help but think that if Donald Trump were still president this never would’ve happened.”
Rosenberg made his first trip to Israel weeks later, where he prayed at the Western Wall, posed with Border Police in Jerusalem, spoke with the family of Hamas hostage Hersh Goldberg-Pollin, visited the site of the Nova music festival massacre and met with Israeli soldiers. Since then Rosenberg and his family — he has two children, including a daughter who has spoken on air about antisemitism she said she faced at her university in Wales — have started attending synagogue and Shabbat dinners.
Support the New York Jewish Week
Our nonprofit newsroom depends on readers like you. Make a donation now to support independent Jewish journalism in New York.
One recent Shabbat host was Zev Brenner, a popular, politically conservative Orthodox radio host who also recently had Rosenberg on his show. He said Rosenberg is “very popular” and an important voice for Israel on the radio.
“It’s important that non-Jews hear what the real story is and get his perspective because lots of times it gets distorted in the media,” said Brenner, the host of “Talkline with Zev Brenner.” “People who are more conservative are going to listen to what he has to say but I think people who may disagree with him may listen to him also.”
Rosenberg said he had evidence that some people who don’t share his views — including some who are close to him — had tuned in to Sunday’s rally.
“I have friends and family who told me, like yesterday, I don’t want to talk to you anymore — I’m not exaggerating. I’m being honest — because I said Democrats are Jew-haters and lowlifes and bad people, and I meant that,” he said on Monday. Then, walking back a claim he made in Madison Square Garden, he said, “Now, not every one of them, I have friends that I still love, but even those people got angry with me.”
Rosenberg rejected accusations of racism in the party and criticism of the rally, calling Hinchcliffe, who also made a joke about Jews and money, an “idiot.” And despite criticism of Tucker Carlson, the pro-Trump broadcaster who floated a version of the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory at the rally and recently hosted a Holocaust denier on his show, Rosenberg denied the Republican Party has become a haven for antisemites.
Rosenberg asserted that anti-Jewish prejudice exists only on the left, pointing to Israel critics such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“To say there’s antisemitism on both sides because some half-ass comedian made a f—ing stupid joke, let’s be honest, you’re not talking about J.D. Vance, you’re not talking about Trump, you’re not talking about a congressperson, a senator,” he said. “Nobody even knows who this f—ing guy is.”
He believes his audience is largely Republican and supportive of Israel, and that his non-Jewish listeners back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than most Jews and Israelis. Rosenberg criticizes Israeli protesters and hostage advocates for training their fire on Netanyahu and his coalition instead of Hamas.
“I find that the Christians, the non-Jews in my audience, to be honest, care more and are more loyal to the Jewish people than a lot of Jews in New York and Israel, and to me, that’s unfathomable,” he said.
Rosenberg visited Israel for a second time earlier this month, meeting with Netanyahu at a post-Yom Kippur event in the West Bank settlement of Efrat. (Rosenberg referenced the gathering in his rally remarks, saying that he “had the opportunity to break the Yom Kippur fast with Bibi Netanyahu.”) Netanyahu signed a copy of his book for Rosenberg, writing that Rosenberg was “a great champion of our people.”
The experience of growing closer to Israel, he said, made him even more confident about his pick for president this year. “It made me an even bigger Trump fan, because this administration, no matter what the Jewish people on the Upper East Side think, has failed the Jewish people and Israel immensely,” he said.
Now, with just days left in the presidential campaign, Rosenberg is brushing off criticism and doing what he can to gin up support for Trump. He said he plans to travel from his home in Rockaway Park, Queens, to Philadelphia to speak at a rally for Trump on Saturday.
Support the New York Jewish Week
Our nonprofit newsroom depends on readers like you. Make a donation now to support independent Jewish journalism in New York.
“He’s become my guy,” Rosenberg said.
Anyone looking to him to moderate his tone during the next speech ought to adjust their expectations. On Wednesday, he posted reflections on his Madison Square Garden comments on Facebook.
“I must say it’s been wildly entertaining reading the hundreds of stories and watching the liberal media freak out over my speech at @realdonaldtrump rally at MSG on Sunday,” he wrote.
“It looks like these people have 3 issues with what I said in my 6 minutes on stage. I cursed too much. I was over the top and vulgar with respect to Hillary Clinton. And finally I was WAY over the top by painting ALL democrats with a wide brush,” he added. “If that’s accurate it sure sounds like it was a great f—ing speech to me!”
The New York Jewish Week brings you the stories behind the headlines, keeping you connected to Jewish life in New York. Help sustain the reporting you trust by donating today.
