The Three Shekels

Eric Trump said that Bob Woodward would amass 3 extra shekels from his book:

"Don’t you think people look through the fact, you can write some sensational, nonsense book, CNN will definitely have you on there because they love to trash the president," Trump said on Fox News, referring to "Fear," Woodward's book.

"It’ll mean you sell three extra books, you make three extra shekels, at the behest of the American people, at the behest of our country, that’s doing a phenomenal job by every quantifiable metric."

Haaretz
 https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/eric-trump-accused-of-anti-semitism-for-saying-bob-woodward-earned-three-extra-shekels-on-cnn-1.6468707


I do not know if this means Eric Trump is anti-Semitic. I think it does mean that he has interiorized a number of racial stereotypes during his life, and they are so much part of his psyche that they seem "commonsensical" or part of normal converse.

Why 3?
Why 3 shekels? I mean, Woodward would probably get three million dollars more in sales and unless the exchange rate is $1 million US to 1 Israeli shekel, there would be more than three. So why three?

Maybe Eric Trump meant half-shekels and had in mind

Why Three Half-Shekels?

The basic explanation for why it is customary to give three half-shekels is that the Torah portion that mandates the half-shekel contains the word terumah (“offering”) three times.8 Others explain that it corresponds to the three times it says the words machatzit hashekel (“half-shekel”).9
Three Fasts

The Lubavitcher Rebbe provides another connection. On fast days, the rabbis recommend that a person donate the amount of money he would have spent on his daily meal to charity. Thus, the fast day does not simply pad your bank account, but actually goes to help someone in need. In the Megillah, before Esther approached the king to invite him to her private party (which ultimately led to Haman’s downfall), she told Mordechai: “Go, assemble all the Jews who are present in Shushan and fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days . . .”10 In memory of those three fasts, we give charity in threes.11

 Chabad.Org
 https://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/article_cdo/aid/3942732/jewish/Why-Give-Half-Shekels-to-Charity-on-Taanit-Esther.htm

Or perhaps Eric studies ancient potteries and ostracon:

The Three shekel ostracon is a pottery fragment bearing a forged text supposedly dating from between the 7th and 9th century BCE.[1] It is 8.6 centimeters high and 10.9 centimeters wide and contains five lines of ancient Hebrew writing.[2] The inscription mentions a king named Ashyahu donating three shekels to the House of Yahweh. No king named Ashyahu is mentioned in the Bible, but some scholars believe it may refer to Jehoash, who ruled Judea 802–787 BCE.[3]

The ostracon was purchased by Shlomo Moussaieff from the Jerusalem antiquities dealer Oded Golan. Doubts about the authenticity of this and other artefacts sold by Golan began to be expressed in the late 1990s, and in 2003 Professor Christ Rollston, a leading authority on Northwest Semitic inscriptions, said he is "confident beyond a reasonable doubt" that the "three shekel ostracon" is a forgery.[4] The same negative conclusion was reached on the basis of scientific examination of the patina.[5]

Translation

According to your order,

Ashya- hu the king, to give by the hand of

[Z]ekaryahu silver of Tar- shish

for the house of Yahweh

3 shekels[6]

Wikipedia
Three Shekel Ostracon 



Three shekels must be some alt-right code:

12: A number often used as the numeric symbol for the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. The number one represents the first letter of the alphabet, "A", and the number two represents "B". 

and  1  +  2  = 3  !

And that is quite a feat by any unquantifiable metric.
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