Trump went from blasting Netanyahu to backing him - will it matter to Israeli voters? - analysis

In June, US President Donald Trump reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he would be in prison if not for him. On Sunday, he told Israelis to give the prime minister another term.

What happened?

How did Trump go from acknowledging that he had called Netanyahu “f**king crazy” during their June conversation to praising him on Truth Social as “strong, brave, and brilliant” and giving him his unequivocal endorsement?

That is one question.

Another is whether this endorsement, the first explicit, written endorsement of this type in the country’s history, will matter.

US presidents have made their preferences in Israeli elections crystal clear before. Usually, however, they have left Israeli voters to connect the dots.

In March 1992, three months before an Israeli election, then-president George H. W. Bush announced that he would not approve $10 billion in long-sought housing loan guarantees to help absorb immigrants from the former Soviet Union unless prime minister Yitzhak Shamir froze settlement construction.

Shamir lost to Yitzhak Rabin, who signed an agreement with Bush for the guarantees two months after his victory. Aaron David Miller, an administration official at the time, later wrote that the perception that Shamir had mismanaged relations with Washington hurt him badly, and that the Bush administration helped orchestrate that perception.

In 1996, president Bill Clinton went to extraordinary lengths to boost Shimon Peres over Netanyahu, later acknowledging as much in a television interview. He also tried to help Ehud Barak stave off defeat at the hands of Ariel Sharon in 2001. Neither effort produced the desired electoral result.

Barack Obama pointedly refused to meet Netanyahu when he came to address Congress in 2015, just weeks before that year’s election. And Joe Biden’s 2022 visit, after another election had been called, gave then-prime minister Yair Lapid an opportunity to look prime ministerial alongside an American president.

So American involvement in Israeli elections is nothing new. What distinguishes Trump’s intervention is how little he has left to interpretation.

In April 2019, Trump helped Netanyahu through policy decisions, foremost among them the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. This time, he dispensed with the need for voters to infer his preference from his policies. He endorsed Netanyahu much as he might endorse a favored candidate for Congress.

“Please let this Letter serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu in his upcoming Race for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Israel,” he wrote. “BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”

Blunt? Certainly. Surprising? Given Trump’s previous interventions in Israel’s domestic affairs, less so.

In June 2025, Trump took to Truth Social to demand an end to Netanyahu’s corruption trial, calling it a witch hunt and a travesty, and invoking American military support for Israel in what sounded like a veiled threat.

“It is terrible what they are doing in Israel to Bibi Netanyahu,” he wrote. “The United States of America spends Billions of Dollars a year, far more than on any other nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this.”

Sunday’s endorsement also came with a warning. Trump suggested that an Israeli government headed by anyone else could leave the US to confront Iran alone – something he said he was reluctant to do.

“If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work [attack Iran] ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” he wrote.

The message went beyond saying that Netanyahu was his preferred candidate. It suggested that the choice Israelis make could affect Washington’s willingness to act against Iran.

That is a considerable weight to place on the Israeli voter.

But why intervene now? In a Newsmax interview as recently as Thursday, Trump stopped short of an endorsement and, when asked whether he trusted Netanyahu, said he trusted no one in politics. By Sunday, those reservations were gone.

One explanation is straightforward: Trump always intended to endorse Netanyahu and was waiting for the moment when he thought it would have the greatest impact.

The final stretch before an election is when parties roll out the big guns they were saving for maximum impact. Trump, in campaign terms, is a very big gun.

Netanyahu’s opponents offered less flattering explanations.

Lapid, number two on the B’Yachad list, said in a radio interview that Netanyahu had begged Trump for an endorsement instead of pressing him to act against Iran.

Yashar head Gadi Eisenkot offered his own explanation: Netanyahu had “lied” to Trump about Eisenkot’s willingness to attack Iran. Throughout the campaign, Netanyahu has portrayed Eisenkot as reluctant to take aggressive military action against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

Another theory being floated is that Trump had seen private polling suggesting Netanyahu was faring considerably better than the public polls indicated. According to this theory – and without access to the polling supposedly driving this decision, it is only a theory – Trump, having backed Viktor Orban’s losing bid in Hungary earlier this year, was reluctant to risk another unsuccessful endorsement. Once persuaded that Netanyahu had a chance to win, he felt comfortable backing him.

The endorsement also makes a broader point about the Trump-Netanyahu relationship, which has been marked by growing disagreements and tensions in recent months, as seen in Trump’s expletive-laden June phone call to the prime minister.

The president’s endorsement does not mean that those disagreements have disappeared. It means that, despite them, Trump still prefers Netanyahu to the alternatives. Frustration with a prime minister and support for his reelection are not mutually exclusive.

But Trump’s preference is one thing. The weight Israeli voters give it is another. This brings us to the second question: will his endorsement make a difference at the ballot box?

Is there really a substantial pool of voters in the anti-Netanyahu camp – Yashar or B’Yachad voters, for instance – who will read Trump’s endorsement, suddenly see the light, and switch to Likud?

Unlikely.

Trump’s endorsement might have carried greater weight in March, following the first week of the war with Iran, when Israeli confidence in him was running high. Since then, that confidence has diminished.

The Israel Democracy Institute found that the share of Jewish Israelis who believed Israel’s security was a central consideration for Trump fell from 64% in March to 26% in a survey published in early July.

That measures something different from personal popularity, but it is directly relevant to the argument Trump is now making: that Israelis should take his preference into account when deciding who can best protect them.

Still, converting Netanyahu’s opponents is only one way an endorsement could matter.

Its more plausible effect is within the right-wing camp: reassuring wavering Netanyahu supporters, encouraging them to turn out, or persuading voters considering smaller right-wing parties that Likud is the safest bet for their vote.

It also gives Netanyahu a fresh answer to those questioning his management of Israel’s most important relationship. After months in which the disagreements with Trump were on public display and his opponents charging that he has badly mismanaged Israel’s relations with the US, he can now point to an unequivocal endorsement from the president himself.

The campaign message practically writes itself. Whatever the arguments, whatever the tensions, Netanyahu is still the man Trump wants across the table.

Whether that moves enough votes to change the coalition arithmetic is another matter. American presidents have tried to influence Israeli elections before, only to find the Israeli voters an independent lot determined to reach their own conclusions.

Trump, in his inimitable style, has made his choice clear. The question now is whether Israeli voters will agree that his choice should also be theirs.