Trump Cut Off Contact With Netanyahu Over 'Manipulation' Concerns, Israeli Reporter Claims

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
May. 09, 2025

This is the moment Donald Trump became president (at least if this report is true).

From Anadolu Agency, "Trump cuts ties with Netanyahu over manipulation concerns: Report":

US President Donald Trump has decided to cut off direct contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a report said Thursday.

Yanir Cozin, a correspondent for Israeli Army Radio, said in a post on his X account that Trump made the decision after close associates told Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer that the president believes that Netanyahu is manipulating him.

An Israeli official added that Dermer’s tone during recent discussions with senior Republican figures about what Trump should do was seen as arrogant and unhelpful.

The official said that people around Trump told him that "Netanyahu was manipulating him."

"There is nothing Trump hates more than being portrayed as a fool or someone being played. That’s why he decided to cut contact with Netanyahu," the official added.

Cozin pointed to the Israeli government’s failure to present a concrete plan and timeline regarding Iran and Yemen’s Houthis as a source of the worsening US-Israel relationship.

This might just be a bait and switch to get Iran to take its guard down but with the deal Trump announced with the Houthis (and his praising their "bravery" in withstanding the US's attacks) it's possible we may actually be on the precipice of a sea change.

I shared an article in March about how Israelis said they fear Trump could at any moment do a 180 and drop them like he dropped Ukraine.

As Jewish Insider reported:

According to Chatham House senior fellow and former Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, "what happened in the White House with Zelensky shows that the U.S. doesn't have a constant policy or permanent allies. If there are no permanent allies, if Ukraine is thrown into the trash after all these years ... no one is immune."

According to Svetlova, the fact that the Biden administration froze some weapon shipments to Israel amid domestic political pressure shows that "there are no holy cows, not even Israel."

"Even in the current term, Trump can change. If there are no constant interests or doctrines, that means anything can change. Israel must be prepared to become like Ukraine," she said.

I heard similar while watching a panel at the Jewish News Syndicate's International Policy Summit last week.

One panelist, Sarah Stern of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, said that she's "very afraid" that the US-Israel relationship as it stands only has "two years" left.

[Embed starts at 4:08:05]

Stern lamented the rise of the "Tucker Carlson" wing of the Republican Party as "very scary" and said: "I have to say, to be very honest, that I'm very worried. We might have a two-year window to get a lot accomplished in Congress, I'm very afraid that the Democrats might take the House, might take the Senate -- we have a lot of work to do."

With the majority of Americans now opposing Israel, the gap between what the American people want and what our Congress is giving us is growing larger by the day and could soon boil over. There was a poll last month suggesting Chuck Schumer could potentially be ousted in the Senate by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The Israelis are afraid because they know the American public have turned against them and the US-Israel "special relationship" is just a house of cards built on bribes and blackmail.

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