Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has branded Donald Trump’s dinner with anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes as “horrible” in a stinging new attack on the former president.
In an exclusive interview with me while mass protests continue in his home country over his controversial move to control judicial power, Netanyahu said of the secret meal at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida last fall: “I thought it was horrible. I think it’s a big mistake. It’s wrong from every point of view. It [anti-semitism] should not be countenanced, it should not be accepted, it should be rebuked and condemned and that’s what I do. And I don’t care where it comes from, or from whom.”
His comments come after Trump attacked HIM for tweeting his congratulations to Joe Biden about his 2020 election win, branding it disloyal, and seething: “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He made a terrible mistake. I haven’t spoken to him since. F—k him.”
But Netanyahu also revealed that Trump made peace with him after he recently won back the premiership in Israel’s election.
“He wrote me a note,” he said. “He congratulated on my victory.”
Netanyahu once described Trump as the greatest friend Israel’s ever had in the White House and he said: “That’s true because he did some very good things. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Jerusalem as our capital. Recognized our sovereignty in the Golan Heights and went out of the disastrous Iran Deal, the nuclear deal that would have paved Iran’s path to go to nuclear weapons. So yes, I appreciated it.”
But some cite Netanyahu’s glowing public endorsements of Trump as one of the reasons why new polls show a worrying fall in support for Israel among Democrats, and people aged 18-29.
For the first time, a majority of both now have more sympathy for Palestine than Israel.
“America is changing vis-a-vis America,” he responded, “And therefore is changing vis-à-vis Israel. But I think the main bulk of the American public across the wide birth of the political spectrum support Israel because they see Israel as representing the values.”
But when I pushed him about falling support from Democrats and 18-29s, he admitted: “Well there’s a question of where that goes and whether this pendulum doesn’t swing back.”
And he denied “taking sides,” saying: “I don’t align myself with anyone. I didn’t come in as a Republican or Democrat, I came in as an Israeli. And I have close friends among both sides of the aisle. Joe Biden, with whom I often disagree, by the way, I sometimes disagreed with Trump, too.”
Netanyahu revealed that President Biden warned him not to damage democracy in Israel in a recent call between the two leaders.
What did Biden say to him?
“Well, first of all, we spoke about Iran security. A lot. But he raised that [concerns over threat to Israel’s democracy] and I assured him what I assured you: that Israel was, is and will remain a democracy.”