UPDATE:
The fallout of Trump’s gross and graceless statements about Benjamin Netanyahu continues.
A week ago, a senior evangelical leader and former Trump adviser, Mike Evans, was “horrified” by Trump’s reported comments and wrote in a letter to Trump, “Please, I beg of you, don’t put us in the position to choose between you and Bible land…There is no possibility you can win again if Bible-believing evangelicals see you as the ‘F–k Netanyahu’ president who…blames the State of Israel, and not the Palestinians, for not making peace.”
Other Jewish groups have also slammed Trump for his vulgar comments.
Today, in “Trump Just Crossed a Red Line for His Evangelical and Jewish Fans,” Jonathan S. Tobin, editor in chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, writes at Haaretz that while “Trump’s obscenities and antisemitic tropes don’t bother his Jewish fans…a recent quote has stunned his pro-Israel base, evangelicals and Jews, to the core – and could complicate his chances for a second term.”
But, Tobin concludes:
Most Trump supporters will simply ignore the latest brouhaha and assert, not without cause, that his deeds while president will always outweigh any damaging or foolish statements he makes reflecting his personal pique about his 2020 election loss, rather than any deeply held animus for Jews or Israel.
They will swallow, as they have in the past, his willingness to express sentiments that would amount to antisemitism if uttered by Israel’s opponents simply because they not unreasonably believe that policy is more important than his inability to understand the implications of his words.
Original Story:
Trump had been in power for only a few months and had already shown and demonstrated in spades his authoritarian streak, his petulance, his grotesque vindictiveness and his compulsive narcissism – something TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger, two years earlier, had already called out as “clinically obvious.”
That summer, we were visiting relatives in the Netherlands and naturally the conversation turned to American politics, more specifically to Donald Trump.
Some of our relatives seemed to like Trump. In those early days of the Trump regime, they may have been unaware of Trump’s serious character flaws. Word of Trump’s obvious unsuitability to lead the United States of America might not have reached those shores yet.
Still, we were surprised to hear that they “liked” Trump. Additional conversations revealed that those sentiments were based on their perception that Trump had a close relationship with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on their belief that Trump had Israel’s back, and on the hope that Trump’s bromance with Bibi would lead to all things good for Israel and Jews.
When one considers the fact that my Dutch relatives are Jewish or of Jewish descent, such feelings are understandable.
I tried to explain that it wasn’t necessarily Trump who had Israel’s back. The United States was the very first country to recognize Israel as an independent free state in 1948 and, for more than 70 years. president after president, administration after administration – Republican or Democrat – has considered Israel’s security to be the cornerstone of this “very special relationship.” I also forewarned, that Netanyahu had only to look at Trump the wrong way and a feckless Trump would throw him under the bus.
During the next four years, Trump’s world would in fact become littered with the remnants of friends – assuming he had any to begin with – supporters, bootlickers. even family members, whom Trump has callously thrown under the proverbial bus and then backed it up over them.
Why? Simply because they did not adorate Trump sufficiently, did not express sufficient gratitude for his “magnanimity” or – God help them — did not show absolute loyalty, fealty, to him.
But back to Bibi. The much-touted Trump-Bibi bromance started to sour during the last two years of Trump’s presidency. Many reasons have been given. Some are honest policy differences, such as Bibi’s push to annex the West Bank. These and other not-so-geopolitical reasons for the growing friction between the two leaders are brilliantly explained in a new book (“Trump’s peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East,”) published in Hebrew on Sunday by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid.
The part of this book that is grabbing the headlines is another infamous example of Trump throwing an old friend, an old ally, under the bus. This time Benjamin Netanyahu.
But why would Trump throw his old buddy Bibi under the bus?
Simply because the former Israeli Prime Minister had the chutzpah to join other world leaders in congratulating Joe Biden after he was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential elections.
If we had not witnessed first-hand the myriad of Trump’s petty, petulant shenanigans over the past four years, we might not believe it.
But we have seen this movie before, although this one is remarkable in its vulgarity and pettiness.
“Fu*k him” is the short version.
Here is the complete excerpt from Barak Ravid’s book, courtesy Arutz Sheva at the Jewish Voice.
“I’ll tell you what – had I not come along I think Israel was going to be destroyed. Okay. You want to know the truth? I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now. And the first person that congratulated Joe Biden, because this was an election in dispute, it’s still in dispute. The first person that congratulated was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with…Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”
“Early, okay? Let’s use this. He was very early. Like earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F*** him,” Trump answered.
And, did we mention that Trump “simply lied, and lied, and lied?”
