- In new interview, ex-president complains of former Israeli leader’s lack of ‘loyalty,’ asserts that had he not abandoned Iran deal, ‘Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now’
Former US president Donald Trump has lashed out at former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israeli leader’s congratulations to US President Joe Biden after he won the presidency last year in statements published on Friday.
In comments released Friday, Trump said Netanyahu’s message to Biden came too quickly after the election results were announced, results he continues to contest to this day.
“He was very early. Like earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. Fuck him,” Trump said in an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid.
Netanyahu was actually quite late in congratulating Biden in November of last year, conspicuously doing so long hours after many other world leaders.
Trump spoke to Ravid in April and July for the Israeli reporter’s new Hebrew-language book, “Trump’s Peace,” about the normalization deals between Israel and Arab states, which were brokered with the help of the Trump administration.
The book will be released on Sunday, and the Yediot Ahronot newspaper released excerpts from the interview on Friday.
Trump’s denial of Biden’s election victory led him to boycott his inauguration. It also led to the January 6 assault on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, for which the House impeached the former president for a second time.
Ravid writes for Israel’s Walla news site and the Axios news site in the US.
Speaking to Ravid, the former president said no one had helped Netanyahu more than he did, and he therefore considered it a betrayal when Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his election victory, even as Trump falsely claimed that the election had been stolen.
“Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi,” Trump said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. He was “the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with.”
“But I also like loyalty. The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape. And it was on tape.
“I was personally disappointed in him,” he said. “Bibi could have stayed quiet. He made a terrible mistake.”
Trump said his decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran — which the current administration is seeking to return to — was “because of my relations with Israel.”
And he claimed that had he not done so, “I think Israel would have been destroyed maybe by now.”
“Now Biden is going back to the deal because he has no clue. The Israelis fought this deal and Obama wouldn’t listen to them. The decision to back out of the deal was because of my relations with Israel – not with Bibi. Those were my feelings towards Israel.”
Trump also said he had saved Netanyahu in Israel’s April 2019 election by recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. That election was the first of four inconclusive national polls in two years of political chaos until Netanyahu was removed from power by the current government.
“I did it right before the election, which helped him a lot… he would have lost the election if it wasn’t for me. So he tied. He went up a lot after I did it. He went up 10 points or 15 points after I did Golan Heights.”
US president Donald Trump (L) welcomes visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in Washington, March 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
Trump’s statements in the interview back up reporting by US journalist Michael Wolff, who wrote in his account of Trump’s presidency that he considered Netanyahu’s message to Biden the “ultimate betrayal.”
Trump raged to aides that Netanyahu congratulated Biden “before the ink was dry.” Wolff’s book, “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” was published in July.
Trump refused to concede defeat, making unsubstantiated allegations of serious fraud and vowing to take his case to the courts, actions that ultimately encouraged his followers to storm the US Capitol building in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s election victory.
Trump’s apparent anger came despite Netanyahu being one of the last major world leaders to congratulate Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
After a conspicuously long hiatus, Netanyahu issued a statement on his personal Twitter account on November 8 2020 at 7 a.m. in Israel (midnight EST), more than 12 hours after US media networks called the presidency for Biden.
Analysts pointed out that in his tweets and subsequent remarks to the cabinet, Netanyahu did not address Biden as “president-elect” and did not explicitly state that the former vice president and Delaware senator had won the elections.
In a second tweet, he thanked Trump “for the friendship you have shown the state of Israel and me personally, for recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, for standing up to Iran, for the historic peace accords and for bringing the American-Israeli alliance to unprecedented heights.”
Netanyahu had built a close relationship with Trump and his administration, which reversed decades of US policy by recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and removing opposition to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.
Netanyahu’s close ties with Trump and Republicans in his corner had led to concerns of a loss of bipartisan support for Israel in Washington.
The fact that Netanyahu took 12 hours after all major American networks projected that Biden had beaten Trump — and long after most world leaders had done so — was a source of concern for some.
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader at the time and now the foreign minister, was the first Israeli politician to congratulate Biden. He said then that it was “cowardly and shameful” that the country’s top leadership remained silent, and “hurts Israeli interests.”
Since ousting Netanyahu, Lapid and his coalition partner Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have made restoring bipartisan support in the US a key diplomatic goal.
Trump still wields major influence on the Republican party despite his election loss. Asked if he may try to run again in 2024, the former president said: “We’ll see, Maybe I will have a second term. We’ll see what happens. I am not making any plans.”
