All posts tagged "benjamin netanyahu"

This secret greedy deal proves Trump's summit is a cynical farce

This is what happens when cynical, greedy, amoral billionaires and psychopaths run a country.

The Times of London (Murdoch-owned) is reporting that billionaire Steve Witkoff, billionaire Donald Trump, and billionaire Vladimir Putin have worked out a model behind the scenes to solve the Ukraine problem: just make it like Gaza.

They’re planning, according to this reporting, to fully respect the borders of Ukraine and the country’s sovereignty, but with one catch. Just like Israel did with Gaza, Ukraine can “self-govern” but all political and economic decisions will be made or approved by Moscow, all funds flowing through Moscow, just like the governments of Gaza and the West Bank are subservient to the whims of Netanyahu and the Israeli Knesset.

It's essentially a plan to return Ukraine to the subordinate status it had when it was part of the old Soviet Union, which Putin appears committed to reestablishing, country by country.

Trump’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, former Sinclair Broadcasting commentator Sebastian Gorka, went all “peace for our time” Neville Chamberlain with his apparent endorsement of the idea:

“We recognize the reality on the ground and we have one priority above all else, whether it’s the Middle East or whether it’s Ukraine. It’s to stop the bloodshed. Everything else comes after the bloodshed has been halted.”

Meanwhile, NBC News reports that Netanyahu is now moving to Stage Two of his apparent Gaza plan: shipping the citizens of Gaza, who’ve lived there for millennia, to the hellhole of South Sudan.

I say “hellhole” from personal experience. I was working in South Sudan about a decade ago with an international relief organization, 15 miles from the Darfur border, distributing food, medicine, and tents to refugees fleeing the Janjaweed murderers.

We could see the villages burning on the horizon as desperate people — nearly all women, children and the elderly, as the military-age men had all been killed — flooded into the region. Here’s an excerpt from the diary I kept during that trip:

“The land here in South Sudan is vast and flat. The 45,000 people around me share one single hand-pumped well (drilled a decade ago by the United Nations), and no other infrastructure beyond that. No buildings, no roads, no septic or sewage, no schools, no clinics or hospitals, no stores or even storehouses, nothing. Most live on a patch of hard-packed reddish dirt about ten feet square with a few of their possessions marking the perimeters of their ‘home,’ sleeping on the dirt, or on a ragged piece of cloth or, the lucky few, a piece of salvaged tarp from some previous relief mission. Stick-thin women and children with bellies swollen by malnutrition outnumber the men, whose peers were murdered by the Janjaweed or taken as slaves to the north.

“The air is so hot and dry that even smells of body odor vanish. My nose is encrusted with dust. The land is barren of any vegetation at all other than the occasional large tree with roots deep enough to reach into the water table thirty or so feet below us. Dust devils blow up and around, tiny cyclones that seem to erupt from nowhere amidst air that is so hot and dry it feels as if we’ve been wrapped in glass wool insulation and tossed into a furnace’s heating duct.

“One relief worker I met on the way here, who was leaving the Darfur area via Juba (the capital city with only three short paved streets) on the same small plane that brought us in, said, ‘If there is a hell, it is much like South Sudan.’

“This being a refugee community, it is thick with disease, as refugees not only bring diseases with them but are among the most vulnerable of all populations to disease. There’s Buruli ulcer, a flesh-eating and incurable (other than by surgery) disease caused by a bacteria related to leprosy: I saw a case of it yesterday in a little girl who had just arrived from Darfur. She had a hole in the side of her shin that was about four inches long, two inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch deep, nearly down to the bone.

“Ebola was first discovered here and in nearby Zaire. Eighty percent of the world’s cases of Guinea Worm disease are here in Southern Sudan: the microscopic eggs are in the guts of tiny, almost invisible sand fleas that infest food and water, and about three months after eating one, the worms hatch. Over the course of the next year they grow throughout the body, often boring out through the skin causing an ulcer that can take months before the worm fully emerges, causing dreadful and incapacitating pain. There is no cure.

“In South Sudan sleeping sickness — caused by a parasite named trypanosoma that’s transmitted by the bite of local flies — kills more people than AIDS. This is also the world epicenter of onchocerciasis — another worm that grows more than 1 1/2 feet long inside the body and spreads thousands of eggs to all the organs — soon to become more worms — over the decade or so it takes to kill a person. Sometimes the smaller worms work their way into the cornea, causing blindness which gives this parasite its common name: ‘River Blindness.’

“There’s also visceral leishmaniasis, tuberculosis, leprosy, yellow fever, dengue fever, various bacteria and mycoplasma that cause severe and deadly forms of pneumonia, and many, many of the people in this village are infected with malaria (a particularly nasty, drug-resistant, and usually fatal form, P. falciparum, is the most common here in Southern Sudan).”

Following Netanyahu’s advice, Trump is also negotiating with South Sudan to take in America’s “illegals” in exchange for cash. They’ve already taken in eight people — none of them even Africans — who Trump shipped over there last month.

Nice guys, those two leaders of Israel and America. Along with Putin, “the three caballeros” show what happens when countries are run by entirely self-interested and morbidly rich sociopaths.

Forget about commitments, duty, or loyalty: Trump has never, in his entire life, been big on keeping a promise; just ask his three wives or the thousands of small businesses, workers, and customers he’s screwed.

So, it makes perfect sense that he and his billionaire land developer buddy Witkoff, who’s now negotiating with Putin and Netanyahu even though he has zero diplomatic experience, would go along with Putin’s Great New Idea to Gaza-ize Ukraine.

In fact, in 1994 the US, Ukraine, Great Britain, and Russia signed the Budapest Accord, an agreement that promised America and Britain would defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for them giving up to Russia what was then the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, left over from the old Soviet Union. Putin violated it when he took Ukraine’s Crimea region, and Obama doubled down on the betrayal by largely ignoring the annexation. Biden only reluctantly gave Ukraine aid, and Trump has blocked US military aid for eight months now.

Thus, for the first time since Germany invaded Poland and kicked off World War II in 1939, one European nation has invaded another, seized territory, and claimed it as their own.

This violation of international law and national sovereignty clearly doesn’t bother Trump or his Republican toadies; just look at his talk about annexing Greenland or making Canada the 51st state in a dime-store imitation of Hitler and Putin.

Neither Trump nor the GOP that enables him have any moral compass or core values beyond reestablishing white supremacy, enriching the morbidly rich, and moving women, racial and religious minorities, and the queer community into second-class status subordinate to white “Christian” men.

How else could you explain their behavior?

I get it that Trump’s former lawyer just this week acknowledged that Katie Johnson had alleged Trump raped her when she was only 13 years old, and he helped deep-six the case. As an adult, she gave sworn testimony in multiple court cases, one transcript published by Politico:

“Defendant Trump initiated sexual contact with Plaintiff at four different parties. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant Trump, Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted.

“Immediately following this rape, Defendant Trump threatened Plaintiff that, were she ever to reveal any of the details of the sexual and physical abuse of her by Defendant Trump, Plaintiff and her family would be physically harmed if not killed.”

(After her testimony, Johnson received a series of death threats from Trump supporters and has since vanished.)

But will sabotaging Ukraine with a Gaza-like deal (and possible eventual resettlement to South Sudan) be enough to get us to stop talking about the possibility that the current President of the United States is a child rapist? Or is Trump just selling out Ukraine to get another billion-dollar real estate deal, this time one in Moscow and St. Petersburg?

With this administration and the entire Republican Party having lost any semblance of a moral core, commitment to democracy, or respect for the rule of law, the responsibility for the preservation of American values falls to us and the Democratic Party.

Join your local Democrats to shift the Party toward activism, join Indivisible, and any other groups dedicated to restoring democracy to the United States and defending our allies, including Ukraine.

Get out in the streets this Saturday.

And let your elected officials know where you stand (the Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121).

Tag, you’re it!

Trump is going to need a cellmate. I've got just the man

Israel has become a global pariah — “increasingly isolated,” the New York Times recently reported. Polls in the U.S. and around the world reveal growing opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza, particularly since Israel has no obvious plan to end its war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself, and his right-wing government partners, to blame. He doesn't give a damn about Palestinian lives or the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. He primarily cares about expanding his power and staying out of prison on corruption charges. He thinks that extending the war in Gaza will help him do that. Sound familiar?

I'm proud to be Jewish. I'm proud of the fact that Jews have disproportionately been involved in all the major American progressive movements since the 1800s. I believe in the core Jewish value of tikkun olam — repairing the world and ending human suffering.

I support Israel's right to exist. I've been to Israel three times — the first time in 1965 and most recently in 2015. I have family members there. But I am 100% opposed to Netanyahu's government, its war crimes in Gaza, its support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, its racism, its attacks on the country’s progressive organizations (which I wrote about in 2016), and its efforts to undermine what’s left of Israeli democracy.

I support Palestinians' right to a sovereign homeland, but not one run by Hamas, a theocratic, fascist, anti-woman, anti-gay terrorist organization.

I'm pleased that most American Jews, and a small but growing number of American Jewish organizations — including, most recently, the Union of Reform Judaism, the largest and most liberal of all Jewish religious movements — oppose Israel's atrocities in Gaza, including thwarting food, water, medical, and other aid from reaching those who need it. (Yes, Hamas stole some of the aid that was sent there, but not much of it. That's Netanyahu's lame excuse for blocking all humanitarian aid. That's an outrage).

I believe, along with a majority of Democrats in the Senate, that the U.S. should end military aid to Israel until there is a ceasefire and ultimately a peace agreement.

I know there's been an upsurge of antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews in the United States. And yes, some of those incidents have occurred on a handful of college campuses. But the overall number is quite small — not close to the level that the Anti-Defamation League wants you to believe, which they falsely quantify by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

A few anti-Israel protesters use rhetoric that can be described antisemitic and that understandably makes some Jews feel uncomfortable. But college campuses are not hotbeds of Jew hatred. That's a big lie that Trump and the ADL and groups like Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism use for their own overlapping purposes.

In fact, most people protesting Israel's actions are not antisemites. They just want the killing and suffering in Gaza to end. I've protested Israel's atrocities and I'm not an antisemite.

If colleges want to address antisemitism, limiting protest and free speech (and caving in to Trump's demands over curriculum, admissions, and DEI programs) is not the way to do it. Instead, colleges should do more to educate students, faculty and staff about the history and current reality of antisemitism — and how it is similar to and different from other kinds of bigotry, including racism, sexism, nativism, Islamophobia, and homophobia.

More courses, more speakers, more dialogue, and more opportunities for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students to work together on regular academic, extracurricular, community-oriented, and social justice projects to build and foster connections and trust.

The biggest threat to American Jews are not on college campus. They are the right-wing hate groups who Trump has encouraged, emboldened, and pardoned.

These are the "Jews will not replace us" Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.
These are the insurrectionists who wore "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirts on January 6, as they invaded the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to try to overturn the 2020 election.
These are the Trump supporters who shoot Jews in synagogues (in Pittsburgh and elsewhere), at public parades (like the one in Highland Park, Illinois), and at the Jewish museum in D.C.
These are the conspiracy theorists who spout antisemitic stereotypes about an alleged international Jewish cabal run by George Soros and others.

It is no accident that the upsurge of right-wing antisemitism began soon after Trump announced his first campaign for president in 2015. That Trump is himself a long time anti-semite is well-documented. He traffics in antisemitic stereotypes and he cultivates and encourages hate groups, including neo-Nazi groups. He has long admired Hitler.

Trump mainly cares about appealing to his base. Only 26% of Jews voted for Trump last year and few Jews support his policies or actions. A huge part of his base, however, are white evangelical Christians. About 80% of them voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, accounting for almost half of his total vote.

The extreme wing of the evangelical movement are the Christian nationalists (like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several other high-level Trump appointees), who now account for almost 30% of all Americans.

They advocate authoritarianism. They are white supremacists and anti-semites. They believe that the United States is and should be a Christian nation, governed by Biblical doctrine and not by the Constitution. In that scenario, Jews are, at best, second-class citizens.

Trump doesn't give a damn about protecting Jews from antisemitism. His attacks, and those of the Republicans in Congress (led by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York), on universities for allegedly fostering antisemitism are really about intimidating a major bastion of liberalism and free speech. Trump is on a crusade against institutions he considers his enemies — unions, artists and performers (and institutions like the Kennedy Center), the courts, the media, and universities and colleges. He wants to intimidate and silence them. He is weaponizing antisemitism to gain more power and stifle his opponents.

And so is Netanyahu. But it is backfiring on both of them.

Israel has become a global pariah. And Trump is a laughing stock among world leaders for his authoritarian policies, his ignorance, his megalomania, and his pathological lies.

Trump’s declining support in the U.S. is likely to help the Democrats win a major of House seats next year, which would allow them to neutralize many of Trump’s policies, hold investigations and hearings to expose his corruption, and even put pressure on Israel by limiting or ending U.S. arms sales.

In my fantasy world of the not-too-distance future, Trump and Netanyahu share a prison cell. That would be equal justice under the law.

Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012), an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style", and co-author of "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2022).

'No doubt!' Wolf Blitzer stunned as Israeli official calls CNN starvation pics propaganda

CNN's Wolf Blitzer continuously challenged Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, for claiming the charges of Israeli-imposed starvation in Gaza were fabricated.

During a lengthy interview Tuesday, Blitzer confronted Leiter with a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denying reports of wide-spread starvation, and another of U.S. President Donald Trump admitting, "That's real starvation stuff, I see it. And, you can't fake that."

"Nobody could avoid seeing the pictures we're seeing coming out of Gaza, although many of them are in the service of Hamas propaganda and some of them are are doctored in A.I., but there is definitely a crisis in Gaza," Leiter said.

He continued, "I think what the president was referring to was the pictures of hunger. There is no large-scale starvation. There certainly isn't a policy of starvation; I think there's a lot of confusion on that issue."

Leiter then ripped CNN for broadcasting "pictures of children who are suffering from cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis, not from hunger, and yet, we're condemned for it."

Leiter added that there's "a long history of pointing the finger at the Jewish state, and really has to stop."

Blitzer interjected, "Yeah, but but you heard the president of the United States, President Trump, say, 'There's no doubt that there is starvation unfolding right now in Gaza."

He then confronted Leiter with claims of "genocide" made by two Israeli human rights groups.

"As you know, ambassador, that's a very, very sensitive word for Israel and for Jews worldwide because of the horrors of the Holocaust. How do you respond to that?"

"We absolutely condemn these reports, which are fallacious," Leiter shot back. "Anybody is welcome to come and see the amount of aid that we're pouring into Gaza."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

This gangster move is just Trump's latest disgrace

At least no one can accuse Donald Trump of hiding his agenda.

When Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, showed up Wednesday at Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s corruption trial in Tel Aviv, he hadn’t come to schmooze or testify. He wasn’t distributing evangelical offers of salvation to Jews.

Huckabee came to glower.

And, with his very presence, to deliver a stark reminder to Israelis, and in particular the three judges who would decide Bibi’s fate: The Boss says this whole trial is a witch hunt. You know how much the Boss hates witch hunts, don’t you?

Netanyahu faces charges of “bribery, fraud and breach of trust” for, allegedly, trading regulatory favors to a telecom giant in exchange for good media coverage and receiving as much as $210,000 in gifts after providing favors to well-heeled businessmen, among other counts. Netanyahu denies all the charges.

So does his ally in authoritarianism, Donald Trump.

Among what Trump spewed in a social-media post — repulsive even by his subterranean standards — was this warning:

“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this.”

And, of course, the obligatory all-caps closer: “LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”

“Nice little security package you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.”

Now, the phrase “Let my Bibi go” might somehow get set to Jewish music were it not for the fact that the guy who coined it also famously said, “the only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

And who is a human trope machine when it comes to lecturing American Jews about “disloyalty” if they don’t vote Republican to protect “your country,” Israel. Hearing about dual loyalty brings back such great memories to us Jews.

But to be fair, Trump hasn’t launched a public anti-Semitic slur in a full two weeks, dating all the way back to July 3 — when he mused about some bankers being “shylocks.”

Trump, who grew up in Queens, claimed with a reportedly straight face that he’d never hear the “word” shylock for Jews. Now, we can all agree that Trump probably didn’t first learn the term from reading William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

But, Mr. President, you don’t remember hearing “shylock” as an antisemitic thing? We’ll take that as a “cognitive decline” defense.

The art of the extortion is where Trump is very much on his game. Dispatching Huckabee bared brazen disrespect for the Israeli judicial system — a passion of Bibi’s, too — and the message wasn’t lost on Haaretz, my choice as Israel’s most reliable source of news pertaining to the U.S.

Under the headline, “Mike Huckabee's Mafioso Move at Netanyahu's Trial Has Trump's Fingerprints All Over It,” Haaretz reported this:

“Huckabee's visit to the Tel Aviv District Court during Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial was an American, Mafioso-like intimidation tactic on a democratic ally's independent justice system for the sake of protecting its political partner…

Beyond the hypocrisy, Trump and Huckabee's advocacy for Netanyahu to be freed from his legal burdens is not driven by a pursuit of justice. Rather, the trial strictly represents a nuisance to broader American policy initiatives: (that they) supposedly rely on Netanyahu's availability as prime minister.”

Trump’s insistence on propping up Netanyahu is hardly novel in the annals of dictator-propping by the U.S., but traditionally that nefarious pastime didn’t involve our allies with democratic forms of government. This situation strikes a personal nerve with Trump. And the convicted felon let the world know:

"Netanyahu is right now in the process of negotiating a deal with Hamas, which will include getting the hostages back. How is it possible that the prime minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a courtroom all day over nothing?"

So it came to pass that Trump dispatched Huckabee much the way that, in The Godfather, Vito Corleone sent his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to Hollywood to persuade studio head Jack Woltz to cast Johnny Fontane in a film. At first, Woltz said no. He would go on to change his mind.

I believe the Israelis watched that movie and surely they remember that scene depicting what happens when at first you don’t do what the boss says.

Something about waking up to your horse’s head.

Trump and Netanyahu are dishonest, duplicitous and worse

Meetings between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are more akin to a master class in posturing and duplicity than in diplomacy. This month’s meetings were no exception.

Both men are master manipulators, products of our media age. They create illusions that they insist are real. They repeat a lie over and over, and with such force, that it becomes real for those who trust them. Those who do not believe in the illusion are threatened, belittled, or shunned.

Both leaders have utilized their craftiness to achieve personal success in domestic politics. They have developed strong constituent bases, followers who believe that their leadership must be supported and protected. At the same time, they are polarizing figures who have contributed to creating deep fissures within their countries.

Because the illusions they project are based on lies, there are limits to their successes. In the first place, reality invariably presents a strong check to illusions. And ignoring reality can result in social unrest and political chaos.

For example, President Trump promoted his signature budget plan — which he called the “Big Beautiful Bill” — promising that it would be fiscally sound and bring greater prosperity to more Americans. Instead, it appears that it will dramatically increase the nation’s deficit while potentially causing 17 million Americans to lose their healthcare.

For his part, Netanyahu has prolonged his war on Gaza (and Lebanon, Syria, and Iran) promising that it would lead to “total victory,” making Israel more respected and secure. Instead, it has led to his being indicted for war crimes and Israel seeing its international standing diminished because of its genocidal policy.

Truth wins out. And so, we can expect the day to come when Trump voters lose their health care plans and see their rural hospitals forced to close and realize that the illusion of the “Big Beautiful Bill” didn’t include them. Much the same will occur in Israel when Israelis realize that “total victory” is a farce — the conflict with Palestinians will continue as long as they are denied rights — and as tens of thousands of young Israeli soldiers return from having served multiple tours of duty in Gaza with PTSD, wreaking havoc at home and in their communities.

With this as a backdrop, it was both fascinating and deeply disturbing to see the two master manipulators at work with and on each other last week: a bizarre exercise in log-rolling flattery. As we say in colloquial English: “They laid it on thick.”

Netanyahu, the indicted war criminal, gave Trump the letter he sent to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating him for the peace prize. And Trump returned the faux compliment calling Netanyahu “the greatest man alive.”

All of this can be dismissed as buffoonery or maybe even harmless puffery — just two manipulators playing each other. But where the efforts of these two become truly dangerous is when they and their acolytes come to believe the deceit and attempt to extend their efforts to supplant reality with illusion through policies that impact others.

From what little we know of what transpired in the meetings between Trump and Netanyahu, what’s clear is that the ideas driving both are not reality based. Trump’s plan was to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza to a location outside of Palestine where housing will be provided so they can live productive lives, making way for Gaza to become a Riviera-style resort. This was trashed early on as being based on illegal ethnic-cleansing and blatant colonialism.

Netanyahu appears to have nothing better to offer than a slight modification of Trump’s idea. He wouldn’t expel all of Gaza’s Palestinians. But he would force as many to leave as possible to other countries that would take them. Those who remain would be “relocated” to what the Israelis are calling “a humanitarian relocation site” where Palestinians can be provided for and “deradicalized.”

Both plans share three elements. First, to sell their ideas, both Trump and Netanyahu clothe them in humanitarian language. Second, no matter how they try to dress them up, both plans are designed and offered without consideration for what Palestinians really want. And finally, therefore, both are delusional and destined not only to fail, but to exacerbate an already volatile situation.

Maybe the biggest illusion projected by both men is the notion that their “plans” will create the conditions for regional peace. Ignoring the reality that a root cause of tension in the Middle East is the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians, their proposals only add to that dispossession and the resistance it spawns in Gaza (all the while compounding the same dispossession in the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

As history has shown, it is perilous to ignore the humanity of Palestinians. It is also foolish for Trump and Netanyahu to assume that their projected illusions will be believed in the Arab world, making possible an “era of peace.” This fantasy only exists in their minds and in the minds of the sycophants who surround them.

As a great Republican president (may have) said 160 years ago, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community.

Trump confronted with bizarre assassination 'threat': 'Can no longer sunbathe!'

President Donald Trump was confronted with a bizarre "threat" from an Iranian official during a question-and-answer session at the White House on Wednesday, where he met with African leaders.

Fox News's Peter Doocy paraphrased Mohammad-Javad Larijani, "a regime figure and adviser to Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei," who said on Iranian television, "Trump can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago, because while he's lying down, a micro-drone might target and strike him right in the navel."

According to Newsweek, Larijani "laughed as he made the remark...as part of a discussion about the country's military technology."

Doocy asked the president if he thought it was "a real threat," before throwing out, "and when is the last time you went sunbathing, anyway?"

Trump smiled as he mused, "It's been a long time. I don't know; maybe I was around seven or so. I'm not too big into it."

Trump then got serious as he responded to the threat of assassination at the hands of the Iranians.

"Yeah, I guess it's a threat. I'm not sure it's a threat, actually. But, perhaps it is."

It's the latest in the war of words between Trump and the Iranians. Shortly before ordering the U.S. airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities in June, Trump posted to Truth Social, "We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now."

Also in June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News' Bret Baier that Iran tried to assassinate Trump twice "through proxies."

And last November, the Department of Justice unsealed criminal charges against an alleged Iranian asset who claimed he was charged with killing the then-former president before the election, according to The Associated Press.

Watch the clip below via The White House.

Top ally displeased after 'zombie visit' with Trump: journalist

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't quite get the warm reception from President Donald Trump that he hoped for following U.S. strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran, according to reporting on MSNBC.

Journalist Noga Tarnopolsky told host Katie Tur on Tuesday that Netanyahu "expected a lot more pomp and circumstance" to celebrate the bombing campaign during his White House visit and to boost his flagging popularity back in Israel.

"I think his goal, his stated goal, basically for this trip to Washington, which is his third since President Trump returned to office, was a victory lap," Tarnopolsky said. "And I think he really expected to meet the press on the White House lawn, to shake hands, to raise, you know, high fives, maybe from the White House balcony....and instead, President Trump did receive him, did eventually accede to inviting him, but really toned the visit down."

MAGA supporters have called Trump's airstrikes "hypocritical," because he campaigned on his ability to bring peace to the Middle East.

Tarnopolsky added that "from the point of view of the media, it's been virtually a zombie visit thus far."

The White House did agree to a one-on-one with Netanyahu, "but it's going to be held when it's after 11 p.m. Israel time," Tarnopolsky said, "and my understanding is that the discussion is going to be firm...and about Gaza."

Tarnopolsky called the visit "a discreet tussle between Prime Minister Netanyahu, who hoped for a victory lap without having to pay a price, and President Trump, who really wants to see a deliverable regarding Gaza."

At a dinner on Monday night, Netanyahu presented Trump with a nomination for the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, saying, "President Trump is 'forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other. So, I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well-deserved.'"

Watch the clip below via MSNBC.

'Beyond parody': Critics left staggered by latest Trump Nobel Peace Prize stunt

Critics were quick to jump on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for re-nominating President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize after a Ukrainian official withdrew his recommendation, and Pakistani officials considered doing the same following the president's bombing of Iran.

Netanyahu "surprised" Trump with the nomination at a White House dinner on Monday.

The White House posted the moment to social media, recounting Netanyahu's words: "President Trump is 'forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other. So, I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize committee. It's nominating you for the peace prize, which is well-deserved.'"

Writer Linda Mamoun called the moment, "Beyond parody," while political commentator @SundaeDivine wrote, "International war criminal nominates convicted felon for Nobel Peace Prize."

Writer Brian Krassenstein wrote his own parody of the situation: "'Hey Donald can you bomb this sovereign nation for us?' Trump: 'Sure'. Netanyahu: 'You deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.'”

@BeckettUnite posted, "We are truly living in a time of imperial authoritarianism: A wanted war criminal, Netanyahu Who has murdered 20,000 children in Gaza presents a letter to the man who gave him the weapons for genocide...Sickening."

"I hope you find something you're as passionate about in life as these guys are about getting Trump a Nobel Peace Prize," posted journalist Aaron Rupar, along with a video clip of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) praising the nomination as "certainly warranted."

Others made some very harsh historical comparisons

The account of @BagdMilkSoWhat wrote, "Benjamin Netanyahu nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize… is like Joseph Stalin nominating Adolf Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize."

@AntiTrumpCanada posted, "Netanyahu nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize is like Benito Mussolini nominating Adolf Hitler for a Lifetime Achievement in Human Rights. Shameless, surreal, and an insult to the very concept of peace."

Trump holds all the cards — yet he just got played

The U.S. Massive Ordnance Penetrator (“MOP”), weighing in at 30,000 pounds, was designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction buried in mountains or deep below the earth’s surface. The MOP is so heavy it can only be lifted by a B-2 bomber, which can perform attack missions at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet.

Israel does not own an MOP bomb or the B-2 bombers needed to carry it — both were developed and are owned exclusively by the United States Air Force. Although Trump claims credit for it, the MOP was developed in 2004 under the Bush administration, and U.S. weapons engineers have tested and refined it ever since.

Israel has been asking the U.S. for an Ordnance Penetrator for years, and lobbied for it hard in 2004. Until now, no administration would commit. But this week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — either seeking to prolong his own rule, or because he found evidence of an “imminent” threat, depending on what media sources you consume, forced Trump’s hand by unilaterally attacking the sites of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities.

Ending Iran’s nuclear program

Without the MOP, Israel’s laudable goal of ending Iran’s nuclear weapons proliferation — if, indeed, that is what Iran is up to —cannot succeed. There is no disagreement among military experts about the necessity of the bomber. It’s use is the only way to effectuate Israel’s goal of disabling Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

Netanyahu, however, started the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without consulting, conferring or strategizing with Trump, while Trump was still trying to get Iran to negotiate an end to its uranium enrichment.

In March, Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khameini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” Just last week, Trump was still trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran, and “remained hopeful that his Middle East peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, who had been scheduled to conduct another round of peace talks in the region Sunday, could soon get an agreement over the line.”

But earlier this week, lacking any hint of strategy, and without any evidence to support an about-face, Trump posted that everyone in Tehran, a city of 10 million, should “immediately evacuate,” and demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”

So much for Trump’s oft-repeated promise to pull America out of endless wars.

Bibi played Trump’s hand

The Fordow enrichment lab, under the control of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, is a uranium enrichment facility buried deep in the mountains outside the Iranian city of Qom. It’s size, secrecy, and location led analysts to doubt Iran’s proffered non-military purpose of the facility, despite Gabbard’s assessment. Many experts agree that Iran built the Fordow lab for the covert production of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU), making it a key target in Israel’s strikes.

Brett McGurk, who worked under four American presidents of both parties on Middle East issues, told the New York Times that Fordow has “been the crux” of Iran’s weapons development all along. McGurk, along with other weapons experts, agree that if Israel’s newest bombing campaign against Iran ends with Fordow still enriching uranium, Israel’s campaign will have failed.

U.S. military strategists have been testing the MOP bomb in simulation labs enough to know that one bomb won’t do it. To successfully wreck Fordow, the attack will have to come in waves, with B-2s firing one bomb after another down the same hole into the mountain. The operation can only be executed by an American pilot and crew.

A reality TV president

The timing, in terms of U.S. national security, could not be worse. Trump is fresh off the heels of a globally embarrassing military parade that cost taxpayers $45 million. Hundreds of thousands of spectators were expected to attend but most media outlets, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, reported sparse attendance, extremely low energy, and mostly empty bleachers. The optics were painful. Trump’s Kim Jong-un style parade quickly became an international joke, with the most viral social media clip showing a tank rolling by empty spectator benches accompanied only by the lonely sound of creaking metal.

Fox News, of course, fawned over tanks in the street, and praised the parade with uninterrupted coverage. But the rest of the world saw the real spectacle happening at the same time: over 5 million people turned out to protest against Trump in over 2,100 cities across the nation. The anti-Trump No Kings Day demonstration was hailed as the largest protest in U.S. history.

Following this embarrassing split screen, publicized around the world, Trump likely appreciates that Israel, by bombing Iran and pulling the U.S. into its war, changed the channel.

Trump brought us here

It can’t be forgotten that Trump led us to this precarious path when he withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, after it had been painstakingly hammered out among several nations including the U.S., Iran, France, Germany, Great Britain, China and Russia.

At the time he withdrew from the agreement, Trump’s move was expected to embolden hard-line forces in Iran, supercharging a Middle East arms race. If Netanyahu is to be believed, that is exactly what happened. President Barack Obama, whose team negotiated the agreement, predicted that Trump’s withdrawal would “leave the world less safe,” and confronted with “a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.”

And that losing choice is exactly where we are.

As of this writing, nothing is certain, but my money is on Trump deploying the MOP.

For one thing, Trump’s parade flop denied him the spectacle of military lethality he so desperately craves. Deploying the bomber will allow 24/7 Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax coverage of Trump beating his chest. For another thing, Trump is demanding a $1 trillion dollar defense budget while purporting to keep the U.S. out of foreign entanglements. It’s only a matter of time before senators put two and two together and figure out that Trump wants that $1 trillion to morph the military into a domestic attack force to be deployed on American soil, against American citizens who live in Democratic-run cities.

Deploying the MOP against Iran will help delay that moment of realization and provide Republicans with some diverting optics — cue Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in aviator glasses, manning a fighter jet. It could even help Trump’s budget negotiations.

It's too much to expect an effective Israel strategy from Trump, given that Netanyahu and his advisors are operating well above the second-grade level of intellect parading in the White House. Afghanistan should have taught us — even Trump — that it is far easier to topple a hostile foreign regime than it is to replace it with a functioning government acceptable to its people. Israel, if it topples the Khamenei regime, could end up leaving Iran in the hands of violent factions even more dangerous than they are now.

Netanyahu will likely get his way with Trump and the MOP, and he knows it. Fox News will re-write the narrative and sell it as proof of Trump’s genius, which 45% of the country will buy, and the U.S. will find itself in another Neanderthal war that will never end.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

'That's a big headline': CNN anchor surprised by pundit's claim about Trump

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, who served as an intelligence officer with the Israeli Defense Forces, told CNN Wednesday that Israel fully expects President Donald Trump to involve the U.S. in its bombing campaign against Iran.

Ravid told anchor Sara Sidner that Israel was "pretty close" to having identified all of the targets they need to hit.

"I think they need another 2 or 3 days, tops, before they exhaust all the targets that they had," Ravid said. "Obviously there are new targets coming in all the time, but I think that the major things have already been done."

Ravid said that Trump's phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the final step before announcing U.S. involvement.

"Now, I think everyone are waiting to see not if, but when President Trump will order a military strike," Ravid said. "That's at least what I hear from Israeli officials. They are certain that Trump is going to join this war."

Sidner was struck by Ravid's prediction.

"Yeah, that's a big headline there, that your officials in Israel are saying they are certain that President Donald Trump is going to enter this war militarily," Sidner said.

Ravid explained that Israel "just does not have the bombs to penetrate" Iran's heavily fortified facility in Fordow.

"In order to destroy it, it needs the 30,000 pound bombs that the U.S. has and the B-2 bombers that the U.S. has in order to drop those bombs in Iran," Ravid said.

He added that the "number one thing Israel wants from the U.S." is to "take out this nuclear facility in Fordow." Everything else, Ravid said, the Israelis "can manage on their own."

Watch the clip below via CNN or click the link here.