When Tammy Bruce got a call on Christmas Day from Donald Trump about four months ago, the conservative talk-show host and political commentator assumed that the then-U.S. president-elect was calling to wish her a happy holiday.
“He asked me if I would want this job,” Bruce, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman, told JNS. “While it had not even occurred to me, it was an interesting kind of automatic response.”
Bruce, who had been happy in her role at the time, said yes.
Adjusting to the new role, which tends to be filled with career foreign service officers with deep knowledge of international relations, has been like “learning a different language” and “like drinking from a fire hose,” she told JNS during a recent interview, which ran about 20 minutes at the State Department.
Foreign and civil service staff at the State Department gave Bruce a “remarkable education in many, many different ways,” she said.
“The pride of being able to be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people and in the greatest country on Earth, next to Israel,” she told JNS. “It’s an honor to be able to make a difference and to be able to speak in this regard with an administration that I love so much and that I feel genuinely represented by.”
The 62-year-old Los Angeles native, whose social media handles reveal a deep affinity for Jews and Israel, told JNS that she isn’t Jewish, despite rumors to the contrary, including in an op-ed in a Jewish wire, which referred to her as a “prominent member of the tribe.”
“I don’t mind people thinking that at all,” the former Fox News personality and author told JNS. “I do recall after the Oct. 7 attacks, I went to a jeweler in the World Trade Center to get the Star of David to wear on the air. The jeweler knows me and he said, ‘People will think you’re Jewish.’”
“I said, ‘I hope so,’” Bruce told JNS.
After Oct. 7, “we all have to be Jewish,” according to the State Department spokeswoman. “We all have to recognize this is about humanity, about the nature of the Jewish people. The Judeo-Christian ethic, the impact of the Jewish people throughout history, the inventions, the medicine, the education that is delivered by Israel.”
Non-Jews have the option between being jealous of or grateful to Jews, according to Bruce.
“The struggle of the Jewish people and the survival of Jews around the world through millennia shows us that, in fact, yes, sometimes things will be difficult,” she said. “Envy does drive awful things,” she added, but “you don’t need to become a victim. It is about looking forward for family, for the future, and for really, the rest of the world.”
A former Democrat and liberal activist, Bruce never met her father. She dropped out of high school after two weeks, due to boredom, but passed the state’s proficiency exam. She earned a political science degree at the University of Southern California.
Bruce gained notoriety during the O.J. Simpson trial when, on the radio, she prioritized talking about domestic violence rather than racial tensions when addressing the case. That stance put her at odds with the National Organization for Women, for which she served as Los Angeles president.
She broke with the organization and, disillusioned with modern feminism, Bruce moved to the right side of the aisle. She credits David Horowitz, the Jewish American writer and activist who recently died at 86, as a major influence.
“He was a real supporter of people, of lost sheep in a certain sense, to make sure that they had the space to grow and understand what was happening,” Bruce told JNS. “In my early days, there were many influences like that, and David continued to be an influence, having gone from the left to the right himself.”
Bruce also mentioned Andrew Breitbart, the conservative journalist and commentator who was adopted into a Jewish family, as a major influence.
A ‘gift’ to respect Israel
In her Foggy Bottom role, Bruce has to draft talking points and responses to anticipated questions in a voice that represents Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, and the Trump administration. That’s been a learning curve for the former radio host, who was used to speaking her own mind—three hours daily on the radio, for years.
“I am not helping decide on policy. I agree with the policies, but my job is to argue for and present the nature of what the secretary of state is doing, what the State Department’s priorities are, and how we’re implementing those priorities,” she told JNS.
“I have to think about it each time before we go to the podium,” she said. “Sometimes I have to stop because a question is asked and I have an opinion. Oh, I have an opinion.”
Beyond the twice-weekly press briefings that Bruce gives at the State Department, the spokeswoman also appears on television and visits the correspondents’ room at the department, which is adjacent to the briefing room. There, she meets with the print, radio and television journalists who cover the department full-time.
Those informal, off-the-record “gaggles” cannot be reported upon, but they give Bruce a chance to preview and explain upcoming department initiatives or to add “color” to ongoing stories for the benefit of reporters.
Israel comes up frequently during press briefings, and several news outlets that tend to be hostile to the Jewish state show up to attack the Jewish state in their ostensible questions. Career staff at the State Department often try to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship in bipartisan terms, but political appointees can be eager to inject politics back in. That often means that Jerusalem is a topic of conversation.
Bruce told JNS that it is important to her that “it is our arguments that should prevail.”
“This is an opportunity to show people, who perhaps did not vote for President Trump or Republicans, and to show the people working in this building why our ideas are better,” she said. “I know how the secretary feels about Israel—very passionately.”
“We know what the president thinks about Israel. It is a value system belief when we understand and respect and honor the Jewish experience through millennia, as we experience a government and a country that exists only because of the Jewish people’s experience,” she said.
To Bruce, it is a “gift” to be able to “demonstrate the respect” for Israel.
“Dare I say, ‘It’s easy, because it’s obvious,’” she said.
“We have an obligation and a duty to make sure that people understand why Israel matters, why the Jewish people matter, and why it is the responsibility of every person on this planet to recognize that,” she told JNS. “When that gets done, then we will have achieved something that is worth living for.”