Trump admits to lobbing expletives at foreign leader: 'I was a little bit perturbed'

President Donald Trump admitted in an interview published Wednesday that he lobbed expletives at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an explosive phone call on Monday, citing his growing frustration with Israel’s refusal to halt its invasion and bombardment of Lebanon as the cause for his outburst.

Details of the supposed call were first reported on by Axios, which claimed Trump had called Netanyahu “f------ crazy,” and said that “everybody hates you” and “hates Israel.” Trump also reportedly told the prime minister that he’d “be in prison if it weren’t for me,” with Netanyahu having been indicted on corruption charges by the Israeli government, and for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Trump was asked about the authenticity of the call in an interview with The New York Post’s Miranda Devine, host of the outlet’s podcast Pod Force One.

“You were angry with him, you said ‘are you f-ing crazy, what are you f-ing doing, I helped you stay out of jail’ – is that true?” Devine asked in a video interview published on Wednesday. “Did you speak to him in those terms?”

“I did,” Trump admitted, before pressing back on the call being characterized as “angry.” “I wouldn’t say angry, I was a little bit… perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know? At some point, I said, ‘Bibi, we got to stop this, we got to stop this.’”

Since its latest invasion of Lebanon in early March, Israel has killed more than 3,400 Lebanese and injured over 10,200, per the Lebanon Health Ministry. Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon is a key sticking point in the Trump administration’s peace negotiations with Tehran. Iran has demanded that Israel halt its bombardment of Lebanon as a condition in its negotiations with the Trump administration on ending the war, a demand that Israel has largely ignored, despite Trump himself demanding as much in April.