Trump is making a mistake that could cost him the presidency

When Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky recently stood next to Trump in search of support against Russia, looking like a kid being chewed out by the school principal, Trump reminded him that “it takes two to tango.” But, when it comes to Israel, Trump only sees a soloist, minding its own business and inexplicably eliciting the wrath of its neighbors. And Trump just can’t seem to shut up about it.

That isn’t what his base signed up for.

On the anniversary of the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked Israeli civilians at an adjacent music festival following years of anti-Palestinian oppression, Trump had a variety of options. His base expects him mainly just to butt out and focus on problems that affect the daily lives of Americans – not all of whom live in Israel, contrary to perception.

Trump fancies himself such a peacemaker on Ukraine that he’s said he could resolve that conflict in a jiffy. He has no such ambition for the Middle East, apparently. Instead, he threw on a yarmulke and stood beside some giant tablets with Hebrew inscriptions, and riffed about how he would “remove the Jew haters” if elected in November, and how the “bond between the United States and Israel is strong and enduring” and that he would ensure that it was “closer than it ever was before.”

Trump called on Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” Trump said at a recent rally, ignoring the fact that nuclear weapons have a magical way of inciting respectful behavior all-around, in the same way that Trump’s beloved second amendment does in the US.

That remark alone places Trump in a more pro-Israel and pro-war posture than the Biden administration, which has explicitly objected to Israel attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. He’s also more aggressively pro-Israel than his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris, who at least routinely pays lip service to the need to protect Palestinian civilians in light of Israeli bombardments and glaringly dodged the question when asked whether Israel is even an ally.

Who is Trump even trying to appeal to? The establishment? Why even bother? He has long lost their support on everything else, and this certainly isn’t going to bring them back aboard. Republican neocons? Same thing.

Certainly not his “MAGA” base, whose position is non-interventionist and in favor of butting out of tiffs between countries on the other side of the planet. There was no shortage of them who noticed Trump’s October 7 pandering and announced on social media something along the lines of, “that’s it, I’m out.”

Maybe he’s trying to charm American voters, more generally? A new Pew Research survey published this month found that just 31% of them have confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with 75% of them now concerned that US forces will somehow end up getting dragged into the melee. A YouGov poll has found that just 33% of Americans sympathize with Israel over Palestinians in the Gaza conflict. A Gallup poll from March also found that a majority of US voters oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza. And that was even before it kicked off similar action against Syria, Lebanon, and “Hezbollah pagers” exploding in the vicinity of civilians.

What does Trump honestly think that American voters care more about: seeing their tax cash blown on foreign wars like the one he’s ginning up right now by talking like he’s a trainer hyping up his fighter in the corner of a boxing ring – or antisemitism? Americans are actually more concerned about anti-Muslim discrimination, according to a Pew Research poll from April. Yet Trump went on about how he was going to “remove the Jew haters” if elected. Who does he even mean by that? Is anyone whose position is just to let Israel sort out its own problems without dragging the entire world into a potential third world war, considered a hater?

The biggest problem with Trump’s stance is arguably that supporters of his anti-war posture really can’t figure out what’s going on with him here. You can’t be anti-war except for when it comes to Israel. They see Trump’s passion on this specific issue and how it contrasts so drastically with Harris’ more neutral demeanor, to the point that it risks handing her a wedge issue to pry some Republican or Independent voters away – particularly those who might be skeptical about Trump’s motives. Harris’ position is just classic Washington establishment, which is bad enough. But Trump, in contrast, seems inexplicably psyched about Israeli warfare.

Perhaps the most reasonable explanation can be found in looking at Trump’s campaign sponsors. Mogul Sheldon Adelson was described by Politico in 2021 as the “mega donor who underwrote the GOP’s pro-Israel shift.” Having passed away that same year, his widow, Israeli-born Miriam, “gave President George W. Bush grief over then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s efforts to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” In moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, Trump did what Adelson had long wanted. At the time, it seemed like a lot of unnecessary drama. And you have to wonder how much more has already been bankrolled, locked and loaded in anticipation of Trump’s return to office. 

NBC News has referred to the “Adelson primary” – a traditional process by which GOP primary candidates met with the mogul in a bid to win his favor, and his cash. The New York Times earlier this year evoked his widow’s “$100 million plan to elect Trump” through political action committee donations. Trump awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018. Surely it had nothing to do with the $20 million in donations to his campaign in 2016, despite only reportedly backing him beginning a couple of months before the vote.

During a campaign event over the summer, Trump introduced Miriam Adelson and referenced the award that he gave her, suggesting that it’s equivalent to the Congressional Medal of Honor for wounded soldiers, except better, because “she’s a healthy, beautiful woman,” unlike soldiers “in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” Not sure exactly what millions in campaign donations buys folks nowadays, but presumably it’s something more than an attempt at flattery that wouldn’t have even made it onto a greeting card sold at the dollar store.

According to Israeli media outlet i24 News, Trump flipped out over the summer because he didn’t feel that he was getting enough cash from Adelson’s widow, with his assistant reportedly calling her staffers “Republicans in name only.”

All this would certainly serve to explain why he’s upped the volume on Adelson’s single cause in the final stretch of the campaign – the same time frame in which Trump scored all the Adelson cash that contributed to his first election win.

In any case, it’s a bad look. It feels like something is glaringly off, and there’s a lack of transparency as to what’s behind it all. It’s no secret that establishment politicians like Harris cater to the military industrial complex, which Trump routinely denounces. But Trump is raising the possibility among his supporters that there’s something even potentially more shady than that lurking behind his pandering. And the risk he takes in persisting with it is that voters could either stay home or decide to vote for the devil they know.