At a campaign rally in Park City, Kansas, on Monday night, President Trump defended Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) following a New York Times report that Marshall sued more than 700 of his own patients over unpaid bills when he was an OB-GYN. “You have to, by law, go after those people,” Trump told the crowd, adding that the press “made it like, ‘Oh, he was some kind of a Shylock-type guy.’”
“Shylock” is the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The Anti-Defamation League said on X Tuesday that the term is “rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype.”
Trump used the same word at an Iowa rally in July 2025, then told reporters he had “never heard it that way” and that to him it means “somebody that’s a moneylender at high rates.”
Tonight Trump yet again used the antisemitic “Shylock” — a year after he was called out for doing so and claimed he didn’t know it was problematic.
Again: not an accident. He has consistently normalized antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes.
https://t.co/2e9wv7jXAC https://t.co/hh2PHWbqzQ— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) October 20, 2026
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, wrote that Trump “yet again” used the term a year after being called out for it.
“Again: not an accident. He has consistently normalized antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes,” she said. Fox News commentator Jessica Tarlov, replying to a clip of Trump’s remarks, wrote: “This isn’t true and is antisemitic.”
The White House had not responded to NBC News’ request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
This isn’t true and is antisemitic.
— Jessica Tarlov (@JessicaTarlov) October 20, 2026
Marshall has called the Times story a “hit job,” and his lawyer says he had no involvement in the arrest warrants. His spokesperson, Payton Fuller, told the Times: “Judges issue warrants when people repeatedly miss court dates, not doctors.”
[NOTE: The New York Times reported that Marshall’s practice sued over balances as small as $101 and charged 18 percent annual interest. Eighty-one of the cases led to arrests after missed court dates.]
Marshall faces Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor, in a race Kansas Republicans would normally win easily. No Democrat has won a Senate race in the state since 1932, but an Emerson College poll in September had Hamilton within the margin of error. Hamilton said Trump’s visit showed Republicans “the most powerful man in the country to try to save Roger Marshall.” Two former Republican governors, Bill Graves and Mike Hayden, have endorsed Hamilton, and Graves said Marshall “has turned his back on Kansas.”