Trump Expresses Resentment towards Bibi in Interview

By Staff, Agencies

"I haven't spoken with him since [he congratulated Joe Biden]. F*** him," are the words former-US president Donald Trump said about the “Israeli” entity’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an exclusive interview for political journalist Barak Ravid's new book Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East, showing, in part, that the relationship between the two world leaders was not as tight as it seemed. Snippets of the interview were released on Friday morning.

The straw that broke the camel's back on the seemingly airtight relationship between the two was Netanyahu's congratulatory call to current-US President Joe Biden after his victory nearly a year ago.

Leading up to the election and particularly after the results were announced, Trump has consistently insisted and propagated election fraud, claiming the results were inaccurate and that he should have won.

Though Netanyahu was the first leader in the Middle East to pick up the phone to Washington, journalists were quick to note that Netanyahu was actually not one of the first people to give Biden a congratulatory call. In fact, he made the call nearly a month after Biden entered office.

Trump gave Ravid two interviews – one of them 90 minutes long. Netanyahu betrayed him, despite everything Trump had done for him during his four years in office, he said, mentioning the call to Biden five times throughout the sitdown in Florida dated to April of this year.

"The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with," said Trump. "Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake."

He added: “I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty. The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape," according to Axios.

Trump made reference to the Iran deal and Netanyahu's longtime friendship and association with the current US president.

“For Bibi Netanyahu, before the ink was even dry, to do a message, and not only a message, to do a tape to Joe Biden talking about their great, great friendship – they didn't have a friendship, because if they did, [the Obama administration] wouldn't have done the Iran deal," Trump said, according to Axios. "And guess what, now they're going to do it again."

Trump told Ravid he felt that he advanced certain policies from his position in the White House that didn't receive the proper recognition and thanks from Netanyahu. One of the examples he gave was the US public and controversial recognition of the Golan Heights as “sovereign: “Israeli” territory in 2019. A year after, the “Israeli” government approved a town in the region in his name, "Ramat Trump."

"That [move] was a big deal," said Trump. "People were saying at the time that it was a gift worth a million bucks... I did it before the [‘Israeli’] elections, and that helped him [Netanyahu] a lot – maybe he would have lost the election without me, the Golan Heights affair raised him 10-15% in the polls."

It is hard to draw a direct line between the Golan Heights and Netanyahu's win. Ravid notes in his book that one week before the April 2019 elections, a poll from the “Israel” Democratic Institute [IDI] showed that 66% of “Israelis” thought that the US recognition of “Israeli” sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights was something that would strengthen Netanyahu in the polls.