Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Monday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the scene at the Republican Jewish Coalition confab in Las Vegas, and look at efforts by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to keep Israelis safe during the World Cup in Qatar. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Bob Iger, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Amb. Nikki Haley.
Welcome to the conference comedown, following a whirlwind weekend of events and conferences from Halifax to Manama to Las Vegas and Edison, N.J.
In Abu Dhabi, Formula 1 closed out its 2022 season on Sunday before a packed crowd of more than 100,000 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina. Fans of the motor races and attendees still in town from the Milken Institute Middle East and Africa Summit and Abu Dhabi Finance Week populated the viewing areas around the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where Red Bull’s Max Verstappen cruised to victory.
The IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, which began on Friday and wrapped up yesterday, saw a range of speakers from Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata to Colin Kahl, the Biden administration’s undersecretary of defense for policy, to Khalifa Almarar, the minister of state in the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On Sunday, Brett McGurk, the U.S. national security council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, told attendees that collaboration between Washington and Riyadh had prevented an Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia. CENTCOM Chief Gen. Michael Kurilla said a U.S. Navy task force planned to have more than 100 unmanned surface and subsurface vessels operating in the Gulf to deter threats by next year.
In Qatar, where Israel has a delegation of diplomats providing consular services to the thousands of Israelis expected to attend the World Cup (Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash has more on that below), officials reportedly backtracked on a promise to allow the sale of kosher food and space for Jewish prayer services. “We were promised to be allowed to create prayer spaces in order for religious Jews who came to see the games to have a place of worship,” a representative of a Jewish organization told The Jerusalem Post’s Zvika Klein. In addition, the individual said, “They were promised to be able to cook kosher food including kosher meat, but at the moment have only been allowed to sell cold bagel sandwiches.”
Bob Iger is back. The announcement last night by the Walt Disney Company that Iger, the company’s former CEO, will immediately replace outgoing CEO Bob Chapek sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry. Iger’s return marks the end of a rocky two-year period for the company in which Chapek grappled with a number of controversies, including a lawsuit with actress Scarlett Johansson, amid a 40% drop in Disney stock. Under the new arrangement, Iger will serve as the company’s CEO for two years, during which time he will work to identify and onboard a successor.
view from vegas
RJC draws presidential contenders at Las Vegas leadership conference

The top echelon of potential Republican presidential candidates made pitches to supporters and donors over the weekend at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership conference at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, with at least 10 potential presidential hopefuls making the event the unofficial kickoff to the 2024 campaign season, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports from Las Vegas.
Star of the show: The clear star of the weekend was the closing speaker, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is riding high following a decisive victory that aided down-ballot Republicans in the Sunshine State on Election Day. He was greeted by the most vigorous cheers and applause of any of the weekend’s speakers. DeSantis hinted only briefly at his future plans, concluding his speech by saying, “We’ve got a lot more to do and I have only begun to fight.”
Haley’s comment: The other star of the final night of the three-day conference was former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Haley repeated a line she used at this summer’s Christians United for Israel Conference hinting at a 2024 campaign, before confirming that she is going to “look at it in a serious way.” “I’ve won tough general elections and tough primaries, and I’ve been the underdog every single time,” Haley said. “I’ve never lost an election and I’m not going to start now.”
Trumped up: Former President Donald Trump, in a video speech, remained relatively disciplined in seemingly scripted opening remarks, rapidly rattling off his accomplishments and grievances with Biden administration policies, but veered off-script during a Q&A, in which he addressed the Abraham Accords normalization agreements brokered by his administration. “We had a very disgraceful election,” Trump said. “Had that been a good election then we would have had many more countries [joining the Abraham Accords] than we had before.” He suggested that up to 14 countries, including Saudi Arabia, were on the verge of joining the Abraham Accords “a short time after the election.”
Walk away: A series of speakers took the opportunity to distance themselves from the former president and cast blame toward him and the fringe GOP candidates whom he promoted in this year’s midterms, many of whom lost. Reactions were somewhat mixed. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — the clearest anti-Trump voice at last year’s RJC convention — once again came out swinging in a speech that received a relatively positive reception from the audience. “It is time to stop being afraid of any one person, it is time to stand up on our principles,” Christie said in closing his remarks, to a standing ovation from the crowd. “I am ready for that fight, I hope you are ready for that fight.”
Bonus: Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated over the weekend, but has not posted anything since Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the former president was back on the platform — nor does he intend to, telling the crowd at RJC that he saw “no reason” to return to the social media site.