The rally in Kansas

Trump spoke at a Monday night rally in Kansas backing Republican senator Roger Marshall's re-election bid. Marshall is in a tighter race than expected against Democrat Adam Hamilton. Talking about campaign ads that attack Marshall over his lawsuits against patients, Trump said those ads had portrayed him as "some kind of a shylock-type guy".

• •Marshall, a doctor, has drawn criticism for suing over 700 patients who owed medical bills; 18 of them were arrested.
• •Trump also claimed - incorrectly - that Marshall had been "mandated by law" to "go after those people".

The ADL's response

On Tuesday the ADL branded the word antisemitic, but its post on X, which did not run on the group's other accounts, said nothing about Trump. "The term 'Shylock' is rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype," it wrote, adding that "Regardless of intent, its use can reinforce harmful tropes about Jews".

Critics see a double standard

Some critics read the omission as leniency tied to Trump's backing of Israel: his use of the slur followed by a single day his endorsement of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu before Israel's elections.

Matt Duss, once a foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, argued a Democrat would not have been spared. "If a Democrat said it, [ADL CEO] Jonathan Greenblatt would be knocking people over to get in front of a camera," Duss said.

Precedents for the term

The word traces to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, whose villainous Jewish moneylender is named Shylock. When Joe Biden used it in 2014, the ADL took his apology and described the episode as "a teachable moment".

Trump had said the word before, at a 2025 Iowa rally about inheritance taxes on family farms, where he argued scrapping them would spare farmers "going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases a fine banker". The ADL then called his use of the term "very troubling and irresponsible". Asked by a reporter then, Trump answered: "No, I've never heard it that way."