US President Donald Trump has been condemned by Jewish and Muslim groups for using the term “Palestinian” as a slur in an attack on the country’s highest-ranking elected Jewish official, AFP reports.

In comments to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer had “become a Palestinian.” “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore, he’s a Palestinian,” Trump said.

Schumer’s office did not immediately reply to an AFP request for comment.

Jewish and Muslim organisations both slammed Trump’s comments as offensive. “A President has many powers, but none of them include deciding who is and isn’t Jewish. Doing so, and using ‘Palestinian’ as a slur, are both beneath any (US president),” the Jewish activist group, the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement on X.

Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called on Trump to apologise, adding that his use of the term “Palestinian” as a racial slur was both “offensive and beneath the dignity of his office.”

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