Panelists on "CNN This Morning" were puzzled on Friday over the morbid gift offered to president Donald Trump by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The foreign leader gave Trump a golden pager, an allusion to a deadly September operation carried out by Israel in Lebanon targeting devices carried by members of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, and the panelists agreed it was one of the stranger gifts received by an American president.
"Who can forget Russian president Vladimir Putin giving president Trump a soccer ball in Helsinki?" said host Kasie Hunt. "There's a lot of symbolism in this major gift. I find it slightly head scratching."
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Trump received the golden pager, whose screen reads "press with both hands," the same day he proposed that the U.S. "take over Gaza" and develop the war-ravaged region as a vacation destination, and an Israeli official commented "that was a major operation," referring to the attack against Hezbollah, when he accepted the gift.
"I wouldn't press both buttons if he gave me a pager that said that," said Republican strategist Brad Todd. "I don't think so, but I think Donald Trump will appreciate it."
Presidential gifts are often highly symbolic, and former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield tried to unpack Netanyahu's message to Trump.
"These moments are usually intended to just be a convey a message," said Bedingfield, who served under former president Joe Biden. "This obviously sends a very strong one. I guess that Netanyahu is trying to underscore strength and thinks Trump will respond to that kind of strength."
Hunt wondered about the implication that the pager could blow up and what that might mean to the president, and Bedingfield agreed there could be an ominous message inferred by the gift.
"The pagers killed people, and he just gave one to Trump," Bedingfield said. "So I don't know, man. I don't know."
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