In July 2025, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sharply criticized President Donald Trump for using the term “Shylock” to describe unscrupulous bankers during a speech in Iowa, where he celebrated the passage of his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The ADL condemned the term as a “centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed,” arguing that its use by a sitting president was “troubling and irresponsible” and perpetuated harmful stereotypes about Jewish people as exploitative moneylenders. Trump’s reference to “Shylocks and bad people” in the context of bankers lending to family farmers at exorbitant rates was seen as evoking Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” where Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, demands a “pound of flesh” from a debtor, reinforcing a stereotype of Jewish greed and cruelty. Trump claimed ignorance, stating he viewed “Shylock” as merely a term for high-rate moneylenders, but the ADL and Jewish leaders like Representative Dan Goldman labeled the remark as “blatant and vile antisemitism,” underscoring the term’s deep historical baggage. The backlash highlighted the sensitivity of such language, especially amid rising antisemitic incidents in the U.S., with the ADL noting a 360% surge in such incidents following October 7, 2023.

Had Trump instead invoked Barabas, the central character from Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta,” the reaction would likely have been even more severe, as Barabas embodies a far more vicious and multidimensional antisemitic caricature. Unlike Shylock, who is primarily a moneylender driven by personal grievance, Barabas is a Machiavellian villain who revels in deceit, murder, and betrayal, embodying a broader stereotype of Jewish malevolence. In Marlowe’s play, Barabas poisons wells, orchestrates massacres, and betrays Christians, Muslims, and even his own daughter, reinforcing a medieval trope of Jews as inherently treacherous and destructive. While Shylock’s demand for a “pound of flesh” is shocking, Barabas’s actions—such as engineering the deaths of entire convents—amplify the antisemitic narrative to a grotesque degree, making him a more overtly diabolical figure. If Trump had used “Barabas” to describe bankers, the ADL and other advocacy groups would likely have seen it as not only perpetuating stereotypes about Jewish greed but also invoking a legacy of Jews as existential threats to society, potentially escalating the perceived antisemitic intent and impact of his rhetoric.

The comparison between Shylock and Barabas underscores the broader challenge of historical literary tropes in modern discourse, particularly when wielded by public figures. While both characters stem from a time when antisemitic stereotypes were normalized in European literature, Barabas’s unredeemed villainy and gleeful amorality make him a more inflammatory reference than Shylock, whose motivations are at least partly humanized by personal loss and discrimination. The ADL’s response to Trump’s use of “Shylock” reflects a broader vigilance against the resurgence of such tropes, especially in a climate of heightened antisemitism. A reference to Barabas would have likely prompted accusations of not just ignorance but deliberate provocation, given the character’s association with extreme antisemitic propaganda. This incident highlights how the two-party system, while aggregating diverse factions, often fails to insulate political discourse from divisive rhetoric, as figures like Trump can amplify polarizing language that third-party efforts, such as Musk’s America Party, might seek to exploit or counter but ultimately struggle to reframe within the dominant Republican-Democratic binary.