Pennsylvania AG: Trump called wave of anti-Semitic attacks 'reprehensible,' but says they're 'sometimes' done 'in the reverse'

Asked about a wave of recent anti-Semitic attacks, President Donald Trump told a group of state attorneys general Tuesday that attacks are "sometimes" carried out by "the reverse" in order "to make people - or to make others - look bad," according to Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who was present in the meeting.

"He just said, 'Sometimes it's the reverse, to make people - or to make others - look bad,' and he used the word 'reverse' I would say two or three times in his comments," Shapiro said, according to BuzzFeed. "He did say at the top that it was reprehensible."

Shapiro said the comments "didn't make a whole lot of sense to me."

As a Pennsylvania reporter tweeted, Shapiro also said Trump assured him he would address the recent threats and acts of vandalism aimed at Jewish community centers and cemeteries during his major Tuesday night speech to a joint session of Congress.

The Democratic National Committee responded to Trump's reported remarks shortly after, strongly condemning what it considered to be Trump's "questioning" the "legitimacy of JCC threats."

"For millennia, Jews have not only endured unthinkable violence, but the subsequent denial of that violence," DNC spokesman Eric Walker said in a statement. "For the President of the United States to insinuate that threats to Jewish Community Centers are illegitimate is truly beyond the pale."

Trump has been asked a number of times in recent weeks about an increase in anti-Semitic threats and acts of vandalism, including during his press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump did not provide a strong rebuke to the threats initially, but he did denounce the anti-Semitic acts during a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer also added in the Monday press briefing that Trump strongly denounced anti-Semitic attacks after the latest acts of vandalism at a Jewish cemetery.

Early in his presidency, Trump caused a firestorm when his staff did not mention Jews in the White House's official Holocaust Remembrance Day statement. The administration subsequently doubled down on in defense of the statement.