Des Moines, Iowa - US President Donald Trump used an antisemitic slur during a rally in Iowa as he celebrated passage of his marquee spending bill, but insisted he did not know the word was offensive to Jewish people.

"No death tax, no estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from, in some cases a fine banker, and in some cases shylocks and bad people," Trump told the crowd Thursday at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.

The term "shylock" is borrowed from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The tale features a Jewish character, who is portrayed as a ruthless moneylender demanding "a pound of flesh" from a merchant unable to repay a loan.

The word refers to loan sharks and has long been considered offensive, playing on stereotypes of Jews and greed.

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The Trump controversy echoes a similar incident in 2014 when then-vice president Joe Biden used the term while describing exploitative lenders. Biden later apologized, calling it "a poor choice of words."

"We see once again how deeply embedded this stereotype about Jews is in society," Abraham Foxman, then-director of a Jewish activist group, the Anti-Defamation League, said at the time.

When asked about his use of the term after he got off Air Force One returning to Washington, Trump said he has "never heard that" the word could be considered antisemitic.

He added: "I've never heard it that way. The meaning of Shylock is somebody that's a money lender at high rates. You view it differently. I've never heard that."

Daniel Goldman, a Democratic US congressman from New York, called Trump's remarks "blatant and vile antisemitism, and Trump knows exactly what he’s doing."

"Anyone who truly opposes antisemitism calls it out wherever it occurs – on both extremes – as I do," Goldman wrote on X.

Before his re-election last year, Trump promised to combat what he called a wave of antisemitic sentiment in the US.

Since taking power, his administration has attacked major universities that saw protests over the war in Gaza, accusing the schools of allowing antisemitism and support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.