Why Is Trump Trashing Netanyahu?
I don't normally recommend expending precious seconds of your life watching Donald Trump's speeches.
But last night's wildly meandering, score-settling story about how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Trump, undeservedly took credit for the assassination of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, cannot be fully appreciated with a just a summary or short clip.
But before you watch, check out the latest from the Washington Monthly website:
Will Netanyahu Survive the Fallout?: Jonathan Alter, Washington Monthly contributing editor, sees political challenges for the Israeli leader to explain the national security failure that happened on his watch. Click here for the full story.
Why is Trump Trashing Netanyahu?: my look at the fraught relationship between America's former president and Israel's leader that spilled into public view last night. Click here for the full story.
If you watch Trump's speech from last night, you will see Trump, over a span of about four minutes:
Express support for Israel
Start to share his "bad experience" with Israel
Acknowledge some might say he's sharing "classified information"
Accuse Biden of mishandling classified documents
Defend his own handling of classified documents
Opine that Iran's ayatollahs were "happy" when he killed Soleimani
Praise the cricket-playing skills of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan
Finally finish telling his story about the Soleimani operation, telling the conservative West Palm Beach audience that "Bibi Netanyahu let us down."
Weird rants from Trump are not unusual.
But it's particularly weird for Trump to go to one of the most heavily Jewish counties in America, in one of the most politically divided states in America, during a Middle East crisis that is traumatizing the Jewish diaspora, and criticize the Israeli prime minister for betraying him.
What was Trump thinking? As I chronicle in my Monthly column for this week, Trump grew to dislike Netanyahu over the course of his presidency for insufficient deference to him. And Trump views foreign policy, like he views everything, as a means to feed his ego.
Yesterday Trump also spoke with Fox News and said Netanyahu "was not prepared." As Jonathan Alter writes for the Monthly, that view is not wrong, and may have political consequences in Israel:
When the war ends and the reckoning begins, Bibi will have one of the blackest eyes in the nation’s history. Determined to cling to threatening Israeli democracy, he apparently didn’t notice that his government’s security apparatus had become dysfunctional. After a period of rally-round-the-flag popularity, the 73-year-old may have trouble spinning his government’s colossal intelligence failure.
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Best,
Bill Scher, Washington Monthly Politics Editor