Bulwark Takes - Trump Just Said Something Shocking About Israel

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

JVL and Andrew Egger give their takes on Donald Trump’s bizarre comments about wanting to be prime minister of Israel, his relationship with Netanyahu, and his supposed “99%” approval rating in Israel. They also break down the growing MAGA divide over Israel and Iran, Thomas Massie’s defeat, and why Trump’s political instincts may finally be slipping. Plus: the Republican backlash to Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom and what it says about a president governing like he has nothing left to lose.Text TAKES to 64000 for your 2 free gifts with the purchase of any Pocket Hose Ballistic hose. By Texting 64000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message frequency varies and data rates may apply. Text STOP at any time to opt out. Text HELP for additional Information. No purchase required. Terms apply, available at https://PocketHose.com/terms.

Wealth isn't a fixed point. It's a journey, guided by a steady hand through uncharted waters. At Canoe Financial, we are active fund managers and independent thinkers, focused on building and protecting your wealth. Chart your course. Ask your advisor about Canoe Financial. Hello, everyone. I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Andrew Eggers. and Donald Trump had an imprompt to little press avail on the tarmac, and he had some things to say about Israel and, oh my God, look at the tape. What if you said to Prime Minister Netanyahu about Iran and how long to hold off on strike?

He's fine. He'll do whatever I want him to do. He's very good, man. He'll do whatever I want him to do, and he's a great guy. To me, he's a great guy. Don't forget he was a wartime prime minister, and he's not treated right in Israel, in my opinion. I'm right now at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime ministers, so maybe after I do this, I'll go to Israel, run for prime minister. I had a poll this morning. I'm 99%. So that's good.

But, no, he's a wartime prime minister, and I just don't think they treat him well. Mr. President, how do you do? I think I have a president over there that treats him very poor. Okay. A lot to unpack there, Andrew. Do you think that the Prime Minister of Israel will do whatever the President of the United States tells him to do, like a little bitch? I think it is perhaps to Bibi Netanyahu's political credit, to the credit of his political savvy, that he seems to have implanted the idea in Donald Trump's mind, that he is completely within, in Trump's thrott. all, that he is, that he's going along with anything that Trump wants to do when, as we know, from extensive reporting about the beginning of this war, it's exactly the opposite. It's exactly the opposite. Netanyahu has picked some sort of lock with Trump in terms of being able to do what

anybody who wants to direct Trump needs to be able to do, which is let him feel like the alpha, let him feel like he's calling all the shots while sort of quietly and reasonably and subtly bringing him around to whatever posture you want in the first place. I mean, this was not subtle at the beginning of the war. This was Trump administration officials trotting out the idea that, well, you know, Israel was going to go ahead with this no matter what. Because Israel was going to go ahead with this no matter what, we judged that there was an imminent threat to United States assets and personnel and material over there. And therefore, we needed to get involved with this war too. That was right at the very beginning of the war. If it were true, if it were actually true that that Bibi just does

anything Trump wants him to do, period, that whole argument falls apart, obviously, because if we didn't want to be involved, we would have just told him, don't go get involved. I don't know. I mean, I think they are pretty sympathetico about this war. They both hate Iran. Donald Trump has a long history of hitting Iran. I don't think he took a lot of talking into in terms of getting involved with this conflict, but it was very funny to hear him, hear him say that, giving those earlier justifications. I understand. We're not supposed to take any of this terribly seriously. But one does wonder how Trump can hold in his head simultaneously that BB Netanyahu is treated very badly by the Israelis. Very badly. He's been prime minister for 16 years,

but but very, very badly treated. But also the Israelis who treat BB Netanyahu so badly, 99% of them love Trump. Is this a real number by the way? I don't know if you ran this down. Do you have any idea whether this is pegged to anything? I mean, it seems like one of these facts that Trump is just like, oh, yeah, I saw it this morning. They love me 99%. Maybe somebody said it. Maybe somebody wrote that down on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Maybe he cooked it up out of his own head.

Human printer spat it out at him. No, it's true. Part of the just psychology of this here as well is that Trump both has all of these friends and neighbors that he sees as like, you know, sympathico with him around the world and his buds and his allies and he will go out of his way to help them out. but at the same time, and then this sort of goes back to what I was saying a minute ago, he definitely sees them all as like the 1B, like the beta to his alpha. Nobody has the same political instincts Trump has.

If you ask Trump, nobody's as good at doing the thing as he is. Nobody can make the same deals. Nobody can see through in negotiations the same way he can. So I actually don't think it's necessarily contradictory for him to be like, ah, you know, they really did him dirty over there. But I'm pretty sure I could have, I'm pretty sure I could be, you know, leading Israel into its own golden age, making Israel the hottest country on earth with never before seen levels of approval over there. I think, I think, you know, it all adds up to something that at least

makes sense in his own mind, it seems to me. There's an interesting dovetail here with Thomas Massey's defeat last night in the 4th District of Kentucky. I don't know if you watched his concession speech, Andrew. I did because I was on live with Sam. I mean, so far as I can tell this race turned on two things, really. The big thing it turned on was that Donald Trump wanted Mass. gone. The other thing it turned on was Israel and APEC. Massey in his his concession speech, I mean, I don't know if these weren't really dog whistles. They're just bullhorn stuff about America first and other countries manipulating.

I mean, it was nuts, absolutely nuts. Not quite at like Candace levels, but like ready to get there. You know, he could get there. I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find Ed Galrine in Tel Aviv. I did get the call through, though. I have called and conceded the race. We've been honorable the whole time.

And we're going to stay that way. This is not the sort of performance from Trump that would quiet that sort of thing. Is it? You know, if you're Massey. And in particular, if you're one of Massey's supporters, this was an enormous amount of kind of like the really online argument where you're in a really uncomfortable place. You're in this political movement, MAGA, the magified Republican Party that basically turns on nothing except the say-so of Trump, the will of Trump. And so you have to find other ways to kind of like get some sort of like right-coded answer out there. And one of the ones that they really did seize on was, you know, the APAC money, the APAC spending. against Massey, the fact that there was all this cash pouring into it. I mean, it's true. Enormous sums was the most expensive house primary in history in large part because of this APEC spending. And a lot of Massey's allies were basically saying, hey, come on. Like, what's

going on with this? What's going on with the fact that, like, you know, Trump and AAC are suddenly like the biggest sort of like buddy, buddy force in all of politics? I think there's like an interesting parallel here between the way that Trump still wields like such astonishing control. inside the Republican Party and the way that sort of the pro-Israel lobby still wields quite a lot of that same control within the Republican Party, while those two organisms and organizations and and sort of mindsets are losing so much ground everywhere else. I mean, like, I feel like a Republican party primary is basically the last place in America politically where you can feel really good if APAC is like coming in as artillery support on your behalf. And the same with Donald Trump, right?

I mean, if you're in a Republican primary, and what's that now? For now. Well, right. No, I think it's a lagging indicator. I think, I don't know what this looks like a couple years from now in terms of either of these things. But like if you're in a Democratic primary, or even if you're in like a purple state and running as a Republican, you don't want Donald Trump parachuting in to like say a lot of good things for you. You don't want A PAC coming in to spend a bunch of money on your behalf. That's going to open you up to more smoke than it's going to give you in terms of tangible benefits. But I think, like, again, we're in this weird position where Trump has lost so much support,

where opinions about Israel in America are curdling so much. And yet, within the time capsule that is sort of the currently constituted Republican Party, these remain really formidable forces when it comes to, you know, winning primaries in really red areas. Hard to see how that survives Trump. Right. I mean, once Trump is gone, which, you know, I'm bearish on that. It can be a long time. But once Trump is gone, the future is not A-PAC on the Republican side, I don't think.

It does not seem, I mean, J.D. Vance, not super friendly to this stuff. Tucker Carlson, not super friendly to this stuff. A lot of cleavages are around this very issue. And we saw it in Kentucky four, the huge age chasm where Massey did great among it. It was under 40 Republicans. Now, aren't a ton of under 40 Republicans. which is why Massey lost by 10. But, you know, like the actuarial tables are what they are.

And all the A-PAC-loving Fox News watching old Republicans, they do age out of this stuff eventually. And the people coming in are much more like J.D. Vance, Candace Tucker, Marjorie Taylor Green on the Israel question than they are like Trump. I don't know. I just look at this and I think to myself, yikes. Trump's populist instincts here just seemed to be wrong, right? This is, I can't understand why he's lagging this. Like with the vaccine stuff, right? Trump was out on the vaccine stuff. He got his hands wrapped on it.

And so he retreated and hugged RFK. I guess he hasn't gotten his knuckles wrapped quite yet on the Israel stuff. And he still feels like he can get away with it. But at some point, doesn't he want to, I don't know, doesn't he see BB as a burden? This ad is brought to you by pocket hose. Well, look, you know how much I love the pocket hose. I'm not going to pull it out of the drawer, but it's there. I love it.

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pocket hose ballistic, you'll get a free 360-degree rotating pocket pivot and a free thumb-drive nozzle. Just text takes to 64,000. That's takes to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. Text takes to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. Yeah, I do think there's kind of a difference here, just because a lot of the stuff where Trump was way out ahead on some of this populous stuff, was enchaneling these populist energies that were pretty evenly distributed throughout the party, I do think there's going to be a really long tale on Republican support for Israel, just because, like you're saying, to the extent that the Republican Party is getting less pro-Israel, it is only because of young people changing their minds and old people kind of aging out of the process, right?

There are not a lot of longtime Israel supporters who looked at, you know, the war in Gaza or or what have you and like changed their minds like had a big a big time like they didn't sour on Israel it's people who have never really had views on this who kind of have been forming their first opinions about Israel in the context of the war in Gaza or in the context of you know the the existence like kind of just coming to coming to understand that there is this big you know powerful pro-Israel lobby in America and and being like mad about that hearing the administration say, we didn't want to go to war, but we had to because the Israeli Prime Minister made us. Yes. I mean, if you are, right. If you're pro-Israel, like, if you're a

pro-Israel Republican right now, you have to be like, these, these past few years have not set us up well for the future at all. There needs to be some kind of change. I don't know what it's supposed to be. It's like all the things the anti-Israel people have ever said turn out to be kind of true all of a sudden in this one time. I mean, just within the context of since the Iran war. Yes, yes. And I get like, look, I'm not, I'm not out there. I like Thomas Massey for a lot of reasons. The Israel stuff I've been rolling my eyes at, I think that like the APEC stuff, the idea that APEC is like a foreign lobby is silly. It's APEC is a bunch of Americans who like Israel and want American politicians to continue, American politics to continue to be pro-Israel, right? Like, I don't have a problem with that in a vacuum. But I think it's just analytically, it is extremely true that they have lost an extraordinary amount of ground in a short amount of time. It's not clear to me that APEC or Trump or any of these people actually realize this. I think this is a, this is an area in which Trump, again, you were just gesturing at it a minute ago, that Trump has really lost his kind of

grasp of what is actually like in the groundwater in terms of the populist energy here. It just seems like, you know, he is hanging out with his guys and a lot of them are in Israel. It's like baby Netanyahu and him are Sympatico. Miriam Adelson and him are sympathetico. It's not like there aren't a million Republicans out there who still feel exactly this way. And like those are the people he's talking to and thinking about all the time.

But I do think it has also lulled him into a little bit of a sense of false sense of security here. Not that Trump really cares of all that much about what happens in politics down the road anyway, right? I mean, the reason he is happy about Israel is that Israel is happy about Trump. The reason he's happy about, you know,

the reason he's happy to go along with these Republicans support for Israel is because these Republicans are also happy about Trump. So it's a little bit like, I mean, it's almost like speaking a different language to like try to talk to Donald Trump ever about like, now be careful because you don't know how attitudes toward Israel are going to be in 2040 if you carry on down this path. But that, I mean, that's a problem for anybody who allies with Trump is that he's never looking to your long term interest for anything. There's a tenuous connection here, but I want to make it anyway, because it does speak to

the question of Trump's populist instincts and his like, does he still have his fastball or not? The ballroom. So it looks like the ballroom vote might be going down. I look at the ballroom and I just see zero political upside. Like you only care about the ballroom if you are absolutely out of fucks to give. And you are happy to go to 32% approval. Is that wrong?

Like is it like, is that like a winning issue for him with not a plurality, but like a meaningful enough minority that like it's okay for him to be doing this? Or do you look at this and think this is political malpractice? Gas is $5 a gallon. What the fuck are you doing? I think that you're absolutely right that it is political malpractice. There's been polling on this, right? I mean, even before the idea of this billion dollars came on the scene, pollsters were asking this question, how do you feel about this big privately funded East Wing Ballroom that Trump is wanting to put in for $400 million of his own money and of donor money at that time is what it was understood to be. And voters dislike it.

Two to one, they're against it. That's as bad as any issue he's got. But I don't think it's true that Trump is making some sort of calculation based on that. I just don't think he buys that. I don't think it enters into his thinking. And I, and part of the reason why this seems obvious is because he is not trying to sweep it under the rug in any way. He is not like, privately lobbying the Senate to like give him a little money for this and like trying to keep people from talking about it and trying to get you know get get get it to happen with as little public visibility as possible it's exactly the opposite he's out there doing you know press hits where he gets the media to bring out all their TV cameras this was yesterday and he stands

with the construction in the background and he answers a million questions about it and like tries to pitch it I think he really thinks he can sell this um and and and uh I I don't know. Like I just think that like this is again, part of part of just his instincts kind of falling apart. The other element of it I meant to mention, not just that he's out there pitching it, but he is lobbying the Senate very publicly to blow up the whole institution to give him this ballroom. He's saying, go fire the Senate parliamentarian if she's going to rule that you can't put this in a simple majority budget reconciliation bill. You know, like we're going to, we're going to blow up the filibuster to get the ballroom that nobody wants to get public, to get a billion dollars in public money

for this ballroom. Please Republicans do it. I know. I know. There's also sort of interesting thing here about when they will and when they won't kind of dig in their heels a little bit. And I think the best I can figure is any time you have to be singled out as a person who's telling the president, no, it just won't happen. It's catastrophic for you. It's what happens to guys that you get treated like Bill Cassidy.

You get treated like Thomas Massey. He's going to come down on you like a sack of bricks. And that's also kind of true if you ever have to take. votes. But what the Senate has shown pretty consistently through this second term is there are a lot of things where if it's a matter of just like getting provisions in the bill or not during negotiations, they'll be like, ah, Mr. President, you know, we tried, we did our best, just what the will wasn't there. What are you going to do? Yeah. And sometimes that still comes back to Biden. I mean, that's kind of what happened to John Cornyn, is Trump just kind of got it in his head

that that Cornyn was not the kind of guy who was going to go pedal to the medal for him but but you will see more sort of spine from some of these guys when it comes to this sort of thing where they don't actually have to put their names to it in any real way because they're really courageous and and public servants in that way

well between that the jet do people remember that you know a bunch of Middle Eastern potentates gave him a jet 300 million dollar plane as a present and And again, not a lot of real salt to the earth populism. But maybe that's what the $1.8 billion slush fund is for is to give payoffs to all of the real patriots out there working hard and no ramp troughs.

Everybody gets a payoff. You get a payoff and you get a payoff. Yeah. And if you're a January 6th Patriot, you get, you know, whatever kickback there is. I do think one other thing just on this point. This stuff hits differently. I've made this point before, but I'll just make it again. This stuff hits differently now than it hit in the first term.

All the corruption, all of the self-enriching, you know, the silly amounts of money. First of all, it's all worse than the first term. The corruption is staggeringly worse, you know, orders of magnitude worse. But also, it's not like this stuff is landing in an environment of plenty where everybody feels like they're doing really well and like, you know, maybe Trump's skimming a little off the top, but at least I am whole and I feel like he's stewarding the economy. No, everybody is freaking out. Everybody thinks the economy is doing terribly. Everybody knows that a big part of that reason why the economy is doing terribly is this war in Iran. Not everybody knows, even though it's true, that another big part of the reason the economy is doing terribly is because of all the tariffs last year. So, like, nobody's happy about the state of things. Nobody feels like there's enough money to go around. And in that context, all this stuff, like the ballroom and the slush fund from hell, as you have termed it, and all this stuff, like it actually does. carry more political risk for him now than it used to.

I'm just going to try out a theory on you. You don't have to react to it. Maybe you can write about it, morning shots tomorrow. Andrew Rager writes the best morning newsletter in America. Go to the bulwark.com and subscribe for free to morning shots. I'm just going to throw this out of you. I think a lot of people in America who voted for Trump in 2024 did so because they believed that the real Donald Trump was the Donald Trump.

they got from 2017 until 2020. And that the final quarter of his presidency, the last thing they saw for a year, that stuff was not real Donald Trump. That stuff was just, you know, it happened. It's a black swan. What I believe has been proved over the last 18 months is that that the 2020 Donald Trump was the real Donald Trump. you saw for the first three years of his administration was the final fumes of the Obama recovery, just sort of hiding all of Trump's sins and the fact that the economy is in pretty good shape.

You didn't need to do a lot to it. He passed a tax cut, got the economy to run real hot, right? But interest rates are already at 0% and like things were all really pretty good. You didn't have to do anything. You could just sit there and not fuck it up. Once he had to do some actual governing, that's when every. Everything went to hell. And his governing during COVID made everything worse.

As we have seen over the last 18 months, everything he touches gets worse. We've, we've now had equal parts. We've had three years of good Trump and three years of bad Trump, basically. And this is the real one. This, right here, this Donald Trump walking around saying, give me the ballroom. Where's, you know, I could be president of Israel. I, you know, let's do this war in Iran. War.

Things are going great. I don't think at all about Americans' financial well-being. I'm going to do a slush fund of $1.8 billion to give out to my... That's the real Trump. And you people fucking voted for it. Andrew, just again, maybe an idea for a column for you. We're always looking for material. Thanks for being with us.

Everybody else, hit like, hit subscribe, follow the channel. We'll be back with more great news from the late days of our republic. Soon. Good luck, America.