Trump Doesn’t Rule out Cutting Aid to “Israel”

Once a stalwart defender of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has argued that the “Israeli” premiere and his military have bungled his war on Gaza.

In an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, Trump stood by his insistence last month that “Israel” should “finish up [its] war” before it loses any more international support.

“I think that ‘Israel’ has done one thing very badly: public relations,” Trump told the outlet, adding that he thinks the ‘Israeli’ military shouldn’t “be sending out pictures every night of buildings falling down and being bombed.”

Asked whether he would rule out withholding or applying conditions to US military aid to “Israel” in order to bring the war to a conclusion, Trump replied “no,” before launching into a scathing critique of Netanyahu.

“I had a bad experience with Bibi,” he said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. Trump recalled how Netanyahu promised to take part in the US airstrike that martyred Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, before pulling out at the last minute.

“That was something I never forgot,” Trump told Time, adding that the incident “showed me something.”

“‘Israel’ has the most sophisticated equipment,” he continued. “Everything was there to stop that. And a lot of people knew about it, you know, thousands and thousands of people knew about it, but ‘Israel’ didn’t know about it, and I think he’s being blamed for that very strongly.”