President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a first for an American president. It also cost him at least one loud supporter.
Conservative influencer Evan Kilgore, a prominent pro-Trump voice on X, said Sunday that he’s finished with the Republican Party after Trump posted a lengthy endorsement of Netanyahu on Truth Social.
“HOLY S---: Donald Trump just posted an ESSAY on how amazing Benjamin Netanyahu is and endorsed @netanyahu for re-election,” Kilgore wrote. “I take back everything I’ve said... I’m so done with the GOP.”
Kilgore also claimed that Trump had been “subverted by Jewish and Zionist interests,” repeating a long-running antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jewish control of governments.
Trump’s letter, addressed “To the Great People of Israel,” praised Netanyahu as “a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“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,” Trump wrote. “BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
The endorsement came nine days before Israel’s election, according to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who said it broke with decades of precedent.
“This is the first time in the history of the U.S.-Israel relations that a U.S. president explicitly and publicly endorses a candidate in the Israeli elections,” Ravid wrote.
Past presidents have been accused of tipping the scales in Israeli elections, but none had openly backed a candidate the way Trump did.
The post also drew criticism from the left. Former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth noted that Netanyahu is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over the war in Gaza.