Trump endorses Netanyahu nine days before Israel's 27 October election

Endorsement on Truth Social

President Donald Trump gave Benjamin Netanyahu his full and total support on Sunday, 18 October, in a long Truth Social post addressed to the Israeli people. The message came fewer than ten days before the parliamentary election on 27 October, which will be Israel's first since Hamas's attack of 7 October 2023. Trump argued that any other leader for Israel would be the wrong choice and described Netanyahu as a great warrior prime minister and an even greater partner for peace in the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Bibi Netanyahu has been Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself.

Trump wrote that if Israel chose the wrong leader, the United States would have to handle the Iran problem alone, and he said he was not inclined to do that. He claimed Iran had been systematically destroyed militarily and financially, and he said it would only have been a matter of time before Tehran acted on its threats against the United States and Israel. He presented Netanyahu as the kind of partner Washington expects from Israel, a country for which the United States has done so much.

If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.

A reversal after months of silence

Trump had avoided publicly backing Netanyahu for months, even when he was asked about it repeatedly. The two leaders launched a joint military operation against Iran on 28 February, but their positions gradually moved apart. Trump halted American strikes and pursued a diplomatic deal with Tehran, while Netanyahu wanted to keep fighting Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Their disagreements also covered Gaza and Lebanon, and Netanyahu's strikes on Lebanese territory and in the Gaza Strip over the past year angered the US president and undercut peace efforts led by Washington. The two last met at the White House in the summer and did not meet at all in September, when Netanyahu travelled to New York for the UN General Assembly.

Trump has appeared in Netanyahu's campaigns since 2013, when he was still a businessman and television star.

A tight race

Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history, enters the election in a difficult position. Likud is trailing in polls against Yashar, the party of former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, and against the Together alliance that former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid formed in April. Several recent polls put Yashar slightly ahead of Likud. Forming a government requires 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, and most polls show Netanyahu's coalition falling short of that figure. Netanyahu is also on trial in a corruption case, and Trump had previously asked for a pardon for him. Rivals Eisenkot, Bennett and Lapid asked Trump's administration, through intermediaries, to remain neutral in the election.