President Trump said he was unaware that the term “shylock” is considered antisemitic, after using it during his Iowa speech Thursday to describe lenders that add too many conditions on their loans.

Trump said he “never heard it that way” and did not recognize that it was an offensive term for Jewish people. The word comes from a Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” in which a Jewish lender requires a debtor to hand over a pound of flesh as interest.

“To me, Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates,” he told reporters after returning to Washington. “I’ve never heard it that way, you view it differently than me. I’ve never heard that.”

His use of the term came during a speech celebrating the passage of his “big, beautiful bill,” which is full of his domestic priorities — from major spending cuts to tax breaks. The House and Senate, following weeks of infighting and debate, sent the legislation to Trump’s desk a day ahead of the July 4 deadline. The president will sign the megabill into law Friday at the start of a Fourth of July picnic.

Trump in one part of his remarks, while touting many of the provisions, referred to a measure that would protect family farmers by allowing them to pay reduced estate taxes.

“No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases, shylocks and bad people,” Trump said. “They destroyed a lot of families, but we did the opposite.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a nonprofit whose mission is to combat antisemitism, condemned the remarks, calling them “troubling and irresponsible.”

“The term ‘Shylock’ evokes a centuries-old antisemitic trope about Jews and greed that is extremely offensive and dangerous,” the ADL wrote early Friday on social platform X. “President Trump’s use of the term is very troubling and irresponsible.”

“It underscores how lies and conspiracies about Jews remain deeply entrenched in our country,” the group added. “Words from our leaders matter and we expect more from the President of the United States.”

It is not the first time the president, who has made fighting antisemitism a focus in his second term, has found himself in the middle of controversy regarding Jewish people. During his time on the campaign trail, Trump claimed any Jew who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and was criticized in 2022 for dining with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken white supremacist who is known for antisemitic rhetoric.

The pushback also comes more than a decade after former President Biden, while vice president, used the term during a speech in 2014 to describe moneylenders who issued loans with bad conditions to members of the military.

He later apologized for the gaffe, calling it a “poor choice of words.”

The Associated Press contributed.