Former President Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is raising serious questions about whether Trump can lead the nation effectively on the world stage if he runs for president again in 2014.
Though he emphasized that he still supported Israel, regardless of his anger toward Netanyahu, Trump said he resented Israel’s former leader for recognizing Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election after the networks called it.
Trump also said that he had not spoken to Netanyahu since then, and implied that if Netanyahu had supported him, other world leaders might have followed, and he would have stood a chance at contesting the election results more effectively.
Essentially, Trump said that Netanyahu ought to have interfered with an American election, and jeopardized his country’s relationship with the United States, in return for the help Trump gave Israel in general and to Netanyahu in particular.
Netanyahu responded without escalating the fight, noting that as Israel’s leader, he had no choice but to congratulate Biden. Left unsaid was that he was worried about the anti-Israel turn of the Democratic Party and could not afford to alienate it.
There is a chance that Trump could win in 2024 — and that Netanyahu could return as prime minister of Israel. That could have been an opportunity for renewed, stronger ties — but Trump has now placed that relationship in an awkward position.
Trump fans are alarmed that he continues to sit down with establishment media outlets and left-leaning reporters, such as Axios’ Barak Ravid, who broke the story of Trump’s attack on Netanyahu.
In the past, such outlets did nothing but attempt to undermine Trump’s presidency, and yet he seemed desperate for coverage by the likes of the New York Times. The fact that the pattern has continued suggests that he has learned little from the experience, despite his opposition to the “fake news.”
Pro-Israel advocates are also worried that Trump, in his recent remarks, seemed to accuse Netanyahu of trying to avoid a peace deal with Palestinians, while crediting Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas for wanting one.
Not only is that statement untrue, but it suggests a future Trump administration could actually be more pro-Palestinian, out of spite.
Several other Republican hopefuls could run in 2024, and Trump has just given them material to make a case against him.
https://www.axios.com/trump-netanyahu-disloyalty-fuck-him-276ac6cc-3f70-4fba-b315-c82a59603e67.html
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
