The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board issued a forceful rebuke of Donald Trump in a Monday opinion piece, where it slammed the president’s call to cancel Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial.
“Trump tries to issue a pardon—in Israel,” the Journal’s board wrote in the sharply worded op-ed. “But it isn’t his country.”
Trump came under fire from the board after he posted a series of Truth Social posts, where he compared Netanyahu’s trial to his own past legal troubles and called the Israeli proceedings a “POLITICAL WITCH HUNT.”
“LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!” Trump demanded.
While the Journal's board noted that some of the “vague breach-of-trust charges” against Netanyahu appear weak, it argued that “the workings of Israel’s overactive legal system and domestic politics aren’t within a U.S. President’s purview.”
“We doubt Mr. Trump is familiar with the details of the Netanyahu case, nor should he be. It isn’t America’s place to say, as Mr. Trump has, that ‘Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY,’ or to threaten, ‘We are not going to stand for this’ after mentioning U.S. military aid. That aid furthers a strategic purpose, as all the world saw this June in Iran, not a political one.”
The publication’s conservative editorial board went on to criticize Netanyahu’s allies for reportedly encouraging Trump to push for sanctions against Israeli prosecutors.
“Mr. Netanyahu thanked Mr. Trump for his support, and some in his Likud party have encouraged the President to sanction Israel’s Attorney General and prosecutors, as Mr. Biden had sanctioned some right-wing Israelis. This is a bad case of short-term thinking, and the real loser would be Israeli sovereignty,” the board concluded.