The More You Think About This Trump Speech, the Worse It Gets

The Israel-Hamas war has provided an opportunity for Donald Trump to demonstrate once again, more forcefully than usual, that he has no business being president of the United States.

At a rally on Wednesday in South Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, derided the country’s defense minister as “this jerk,” and touted Hezbollah as “very smart.”

Netanyahu deserves plenty of criticism for his policies toward Palestinians; for ignoring signs of a growing threat from Hamas in Gaza; for leaving the fence dividing Israel from Gaza insufficiently guarded to focus more on protecting settlers in the West Bank. He will almost certainly be ousted from power once the war is over.

Still, as every world leader knows, now is not the time to hammer Netanyahu, much less any other Israeli official, or to cast doubt on Israel’s strength. Benny Gantz, the Israeli opposition leader and former army chief of staff, who a week ago wouldn’t have sat in the same room with Netanyahu, has now joined him in a unity government, at least for as long as the war lasts. Trump seems not to understand that as a former and possibly future president of Israel’s top ally, he should at least keep his mouth shut.

But Trump’s problem with Netanyahu isn’t even about the current war. “I’ll never forget,” Trump said to his cheering crowd in Florida, “that Bibi Netanyahu let us down” by not taking part in the 2020 assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. “That was a very terrible thing,” Trump went on, adding, “We did the job ourselves … and then Bibi tried to take credit for it.”

The implication of this remark—and others throughout the speech—was that Israel is hopeless and hapless without Donald Trump in the White House. He claimed, as he has claimed about nearly every crisis in the world, that this crisis—Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel last weekend—would not have happened if he were still president (or, as he put it, if the 2020 election “hadn’t been stolen”). He also blamed President Biden for letting the terrorist attack happen, in part because he reports to “his boss,” whom Trump identified as “Barack Hussein Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama.”

Trump’s ignorance and arrogance is more appalling the more closely you examine his speech. He not only criticized Israel’s intelligence failure last weekend—something that many Israelis have done—but attributed it to Israel’s weakness, saying they have to “strengthen themselves up … because they’re fighting potentially a very big force. They’re going to have to step up their game.”

Trump criticized Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as “this jerk” for warning Hezbollah not to strike Israel from the north. Trump suggested that, by doing so, Gallant might have planted the idea in the heads of Hezbollah’s militiamen, saying they’re “very smart, very smart.” Perhaps Trump didn’t realize that Hezbollah and its large arsenal of rockets are based in southern Lebanon, which is to Israel’s north, so that is where they would be attacking from no matter what. Should Gallant not have warned Hezbollah against attacking in general? Perhaps Trump doesn’t understand deterrence.

The thing is, Trump doesn’t realize—or maybe he does, but doesn’t care—that the whole world is watching. European leaders have expressed nervousness at the prospect of a Trump victory in 2024, worried that he would not only cancel military aid to Ukraine, thus leaving the country to Vladimir Putin’s savagery, but also pull the United States out of NATO and other alliances, as some of his former aides say he would have done had he won in 2020.

Now, Israelis and others in the Middle East need to worry—or chortle over—his intentions there as well. Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, called it “shameful that a man like that, a former U.S. president, abets propaganda and disseminates things that wound the spirit of Israel’s fighters and its citizens.” Asked if Trump’s comments make it clear that Israel cannot rely on him, Karhi replied, “Obviously.”