During his joint news conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, US President Donald Trump responded to an Israeli reporter's question about the sharp rise of anti-semitic incidents across the United States since his election and what he would say to allegations that his administration “is playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones.’’

Instead of responding directly to the Israeli Channel 10’s Moav Vardi’s question, the last one during the press conference, Trump recalled that he had won 306 electoral votes in the 2016 election when people said he couldn't even win 220 or 221. “And there's tremendous enthusiasm out there,” he added.

He then said his administration would do everything in its power “to stop long-simmering racism,” but didn’t use the term anti-Semitism. He asserted that the US was divided long before he came along.

He ended his response with mentioning the fact that his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children are Jewish.

“You will see a very different America,” he said. “You’re going to see a lot of love,” Trump stated.

It is Benjamin Netanyahu who defended the US President and “his people” from charges of anti-Semitism, saying there is no “greater supporter of the Jewish people.”

Even though the question of anti-Semitism was addressed to Trump, Netanyahu stepped in to say that “there is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state than Donald Trump.’’

“I think we should put that to rest,” he added.

In his opening remarks, the US president acknowledged the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, hailing the Jews for their “survival in the face of genocide.”

“We will never forget what the Jewish people have endured,” Trump said.

The statement came after the White House last month neglected to mention the suffering of Jews in its International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement. Faced with condemnation by Jewish groups in the United States, the White House doubled down on the omission, arguing that other groups also suffered during World War II.