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Trump Tries to ‘Save’ Netanyahu From Israeli Challenges

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on April 7, 2025.Alex Wong—Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on April 7, 2025.Alex Wong—Getty Images

There are world leaders that Donald Trump likes and there are others that he clearly doesn’t.

Then there are some that he seems to love.

Benjamin Netanyahu is one of those. 

During his first term, Trump welcomed Netanyahu to the White House less than a month after taking office and called the Israeli leader his “friend,” while Netanyahu piled praise on the U.S. President. A few months after that, Trump took his first foreign trip to Israel, where he would later move the capital to Jerusalem, earning more praise from his friend.

But like all great friendships, the Trump-Netanyahu bromance has had its ups and downs.

After Joe Biden’s election in 2020, Trump said “f-ck him” about Netanyahu during an interview with Axios, explaining: “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”

After he was elected again in 2024, Trump told TIME, when he was asked if he trusted Netanyahu: “I don’t trust anybody.”

Their relationship apparently mended, however, by the time Trump took office again, as Netanyahu was the first foreign leader invited to the White House and has since visited again.

Trump even proved that he would go to war for his friend.

As Israel’s conflict with Iran raged on earlier this month, Netanyahu called Trump a “tremendous friend” and said he spoke with him nearly every day.

And after Trump authorized strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last weekend, Trump thanked and congratulated Netanyahu by name, saying, “We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.”

“Israel has never had a greater friend than President Trump in the White House,” Netanyahu said Tuesday, after Trump briefly flashed some frustration with Israel and Iran for nearly upending a delicate ceasefire.

On Wednesday, however, Trump went a step further in his show of support, taking to Truth Social to go to bat for “Bibi” by trying to give his friend a much-needed boost at home, where Netanyahu faces a number of political challenges.

Trump blasted what he called a “Witch Hunt” against Israel’s “Great War Time Prime Minister.”

“Bibi and I just went through HELL together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land,” Trump wrote. “Anybody else would have suffered losses, embarrassment, and chaos!”

“Bibi Netanyahu was a WARRIOR, like perhaps no other Warrior in the History of Israel, and the result was something that nobody thought was possible, a complete elimination of potentially one of the biggest and most powerful Nuclear Weapons anywhere in the World,” Trump continued, repeating a debated claim, “and it was going to happen, SOON! We were fighting, literally, for the Survival of Israel, and there is nobody in Israel’s History that fought harder or more competently than Bibi Netanyahu.”

Trump went on to call it a “TRAVESTY OF ‘JUSTICE’” that Netanyahu faces trial on Monday on longstanding corruption charges that Trump, who himself has faced accusations of corruption and has been convicted of fraud, called a “Horror Show” and “politically motivated case, ‘concerning cigars, a Bugs Bunny doll, and numerous other unfair charges’ in order to do him great harm.”

“Such a WITCH HUNT, for a man who has given so much, is unthinkable to me,” said Trump. “He deserves much better than this, and so does the State of Israel. Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State. Perhaps there is no one that I know who could have worked in better harmony with the President of the United States, ME, than Bibi Netanyahu. It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu.”

Whether and how the U.S. can save Netanyahu, who has faced calls for resignation and whose coalition government has struggled to barely keep its grip on power, remains to be seen. While the war with Iran gave the Israeli leader a popularity boost, according to polls, it’s unclear how long that will last before a number of issues, not limited to the corruption trial, catch up to him.

Here’s what to know about Netanyahu’s domestic challenges.

Corruption trial

Netanyahu’s corruption trial presents perhaps the biggest threat to his political future in Israel. In December, he made national history as the first sitting Prime Minister to take the stand as a criminal defendant.

“It was not a happy day to see the Prime Minister in court,” said Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has the power to grant Netanyahu clemency, at the time. But Herzog added that a pardon was “not currently on the table.”

Since 2019, Netanyahu has faced three separate cases of corruption, which include charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Netanyahu denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, Netanyahu may be jailed for up to 10 years.

In one case, Netanyahu is accused of granting regulatory favors to telecommunications company Bezeq in exchange for positive coverage of him and his wife Sara on a news website once controlled by the company’s former chairman.

Another case alleges that Netanyahu and his wife received lavish gifts worth around $200,000—including cigars and Champagne—from Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire businessman James Packer in exchange for Milchan’s business benefits. (Prosecutors alleged that Milchan also gave Netanyahu’s son a large Bugs Bunny toy back in 1996 as a way to seek favors from the Israeli leader during his first term as Prime Minister.)

The third case alleges an arrangement between Netanyahu and newspaper publisher Arnon Mozes. The deal allegedly promised Netanyahu positive coverage in Mozes’ newspaper Yediot Ahronoth while the Israeli Prime Minister would consider legislation unfavorable to rival newspaper Israel Hayom.

Netanyahu has called the charges “absurd” and a “complete lie.”

He has requested numerous delays in the trial, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, his health issues, and the war in Gaza, the latter of which critics have accused Netanyahu of prolonging to evade accountability in court. 

According to the Times of Israel, Netanyahu has testified 36 times in direct questioning by his own attorney since December and at the start of this month began facing twice-weekly cross-examination, which could extend for another year.

Public discontent

In June, the Netanyahu coalition government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote that would have dissolved parliament and effectively ousted him from the premiership. The next day, he temporarily united the country against an external enemy when he launched an attack against Iran. But with that war seemingly subsided, his fragile hold on power will take center stage again.

The country faces sharp divisions over the war in Gaza, judicial reform, and military conscription, among other issues.

Netanyahu has faced mounting criticism for how he’s handled the war in Gaza, for which he faces charges of war crimes, and how he has not presented a viable plan for an end to the conflict. Families of Israeli hostages have blamed Netanyahu for being unable to bring back all the captives. And according to one poll, most Israelis believe the Israeli Prime Minister is more interested in remaining in power than winning the war or freeing hostages. 

Left-wing politician Yair Golan, a former Israel Defense Forces official, said in May that “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country.” And Netanyahu’s former defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said also last month that “this government has lost touch with Jewish morality and the interests of the State of Israel.” 

Throughout the war in Gaza, Netanyahu has also faced domestic protests over judicial reform and military conscription.

Since the government revealed plans of a judicial overhaul in January 2023, thousands have taken to the streets in sustained protests. Later that year, the protests intensified following parliament’s passage of a “reasonableness” law, which in effect disempowered the Supreme Court and lower courts from cancelling government decisions it deemed unreasonable. The Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional in January 2024.

But the protests were reignited in March, when Israel’s parliament passed a law remaking the country’s judiciary in what many see as part of Netanyahu’s plan to quash the convictions against him. The law grants politicians more power in the appointment of judges. After its passage, thousands took to the streets again to decry what critics called a “nail in the coffin of Israeli democracy.”

Another issue that has long divided Israel is the military conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jewish young men.

Military service in Israel is mandatory, and has become even more depended on as the country gets entangled in ever more regional conflicts. A decades-long arrangement, however, has allowed ultra-Orthodox Jews to study religious texts in lieu of participating in the draft. But in June 2024, months into Israel’s war on Gaza, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that it can no longer afford that exemption.

Since the court ruling, thousands have refused the draft despite strict sanctions. Netanyahu faces pressure from his own Likud party to conscript more ultra-Orthodox men amid the conflict, but two ultra-Orthodox parties in his governing coalition—Shas and United Torah Judaism—have demanded a formal and permanent exemption from military service to override the Supreme Court decision. And if they don’t get their way, the parties have threatened to quit the coalition and push for the dissolution of parliament.

“We don’t want to bring down a right-wing government,” a Shas spokesperson said earlier this month. “But we’ve reached our limit.”

Author: Chad de Guzman Reporter

Source: Time Magazine:

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