President Donald Trump announced that he has nominated Ben Black to lead the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.

If confirmed by the Senate, Black will serve as chief executive officer of the DFC, which acts as the federal government’s primary lender and investor in development projects abroad. 

“I am pleased to nominate Benjamin Black to serve as the Chief Executive Officer of the United States International Development Finance Corporation,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late last week. “Ben will use his financial acumen and broad dealmaking expertise to ensure that our Investments around the World benefit our Citizens, and strengthen our Country.”

After noting Black’s professional background, Trump said that his “successful career has spanned the fields of Investing, Law, and Public Policy, and he will draw from this broad experience to deliver historic results for the American People. Ben will demand that WHEN OUR NATION INVESTS, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COMES FIRST.”

Black is a managing director of Fortinbras Enterprises, a credit investment fund, and CEO and director of Osiris Acquisition Corp, another investment firm. He was a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2015 to 2020. Black previously worked at Apollo Global Management, the firm founded by his father Leon Black, and was a senior portfolio manager at Knowledge Universe Holdings.

Black is an alumni of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. He also studied taxation at the New York University School of Law and received his BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors. 

The DFC was created during the first Trump administration, the result of the merging of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Development Credit Authority of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have been leaders on speaking out against antisemitism and advocating for Israel largely praised the Trump administration’s executive order on antisemitism, issued earlier this week.

The centerpiece of that executive order was a directive that foreign nationals in the United States on student visas should have their visas revoked and be expelled if they express support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who was the lead Senate sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act and other antisemitism legislation last year, praised the executive order as a welcome change of pace from the Biden administration.

“When antisemitism reared its ugly head across our nation, especially on college campuses, following Hamas’ October 7th terror attack on Israel, the previous administration equivocated and looked the other way. I’m thrilled to see clear-eyed, moral leadership has returned to the White House,” Scott said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “I fully support President Trump’s decisive actions to protect the rights and safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters and combat antisemitic hatred in all forms.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told JI that he thought the order was “fantastic. It is exactly what I predicted the Trump administration would do.” 

“A foreign student who engages in that conduct should absolutely be deported, so I’m very glad to see the order,” Cruz said. 

The Texas senator added that he had come away from conversations with Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, with the impression that “enforcing Title VI, the civil rights laws, and cutting off funding for universities that allow Jewish students to be harassed and threatened” was “going to be a real priority” for the Department of Justice. 

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), the Democratic co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, praised the order while emphasizing the need for due process protections — a concern shared by some Jewish groups.

“I applaud this Administration for issuing strong guidance to all federal agencies to combat antisemitism. If someone is a material supporter of terrorism and has broken the law, they should absolutely face consequences,” Rosen told JI. “At the same time, we also have to ensure the Trump Administration follows due process and the law when carrying this out.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) expressed strong agreement with the executive order.

“If you’re a student who is here on a visa and you’re breaking laws, committing crimes, and aligning with terrorist organizations that seek the destruction of the United States, you should have your visa revoked,” Torres said. “A visa is not a right but a privilege, and that privilege, once abused, should be revoked.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) called the executive order “good,” adding, “having a student visa is not a right if you support a terrorist organization.”

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Trump “took an important step … by showing that non-citizen criminals involved in hate speech against Jews following the horrific October 7 attacks in Israel must leave.”

President Donald Trump refuted reports that Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, will take over the Iran file, while also lauding Witkoff for his work helping negotiate the cease-fire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. 

“No,” Trump said on Thursday after signing a series of executive orders, when asked by a reporter whether he would put Witkoff in charge of Iran strategy and speaking directly with the Iranians. “But he’s certainly somebody I would use. He’s done a fantastic job. He’s a great negotiator.”

Trump declined to answer a question about whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Instead, he said he hopes for a diplomatic solution with Iran.

“It would really be nice if that could be worked out without having to go to that further step,” Trump said, regarding the possibility of strikes. “Iran hopefully will make a deal. I mean, if they don’t make a deal, I guess that’s okay, too.”

Right-wing talk show host Tucker Carlson appeared to remain seated as President Donald Trump said that “the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families” during his inauguration speech on Monday, a comment that drew a wide and bipartisan standing ovation from a majority of attendees at the Capitol Rotunda ceremony. 

Carlson, who received one of the most sought-after seats in Washington to attend the inauguration in the rotunda — which has a limited capacity of about 600 people — drew unusually fierce criticism from several Republican lawmakers over his decision last September to host Darryl Cooper, a Holocaust distortionist who called Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II, on his show. 

WATCH: Tucker Carlson remains seated during bipartisan standing ovation after Trump said “the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families” in his inaugural address.

Read more: https://t.co/32tCJ9nixF pic.twitter.com/6QpKtpBsmt

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) January 21, 2025

Three months later, Carlson held another controversial interview with Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University professor who, in a lengthy discussion with Carlson, espoused a litany of conspiracy theories about Israel and the broader Middle East. 

Carlson and the newly inaugurated Vice President J.D. Vance have a close professional relationship. The former Fox News host lobbied Trump aggressively to choose Vance as his running mate, and the former senator has appeared on his online streaming program.

Legal scholar Ilya Shapiro had a personal run-in with cancel culture in 2022, when a tweet he later admitted was poorly worded sparked an online uproar and allegations of racism, leading to an official investigation by Georgetown University Law Center, where he had been hired to lead the university’s Center for the Constitution. 

Months later, the university closed its investigation and cleared Shapiro’s name. But too much damage had been done, Shapiro said, and he resigned just days after formally taking the helm of the center. 

Now, three years after he posted the ill-fated tweet that criticized President Joe Biden for promising to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, Shapiro has many more allies in his criticism of the “illiberal takeover” of higher education and legal education in particular, a problem he describes in his new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elite.

The aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel and the rise in antisemitism that followed at many top American universities proved to be a tipping point, Shapiro argued.

“It raised the issue of the dysfunction and pathologies in our institutions of higher education to a national level,” Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Thursday. 

Shapiro, whose career has been spent in libertarian and conservative institutions, asserts that his critique of legal education today is not about the fact that most law school faculty at the nation’s top universities lean to the left politically. In other words, he insists that his concerns are not just the grievances of someone whose views place him firmly in the minority in the legal sphere. 

“I want to emphasize that this is not the decades-long complaint that conservatives have with the hippie takeover of the faculty lounge, if you will,” said Shapiro. 

Instead, Shapiro is sounding the alarm about what he fears is the corrupting of the legal profession, a field that is crucial to so many facets of American life, by a culture of silence and groupthink. 

“[Law students] are being acculturated into the idea that inquiry is not a high value, that certain topics can’t even be broached, that certain perspectives shouldn’t be raised,” said Shapiro. “It’s antithetical to the idea that you train lawyers to understand the other side of the issues so they can better advocate for their clients.” 

“What happens at law schools matters,” Shapiro added, “because lawyers, for good or ill, are overrepresented among our political leaders, among the gatekeepers of our institutions.” 

He drew a distinction between why people outside of academia should care about the shift away from nuance and openmindedness at America’s top law schools versus similar challenges in other academic disciplines.

“While it’s sad and unfortunate for the development of human knowledge and such if an English department or a sociology department goes off the rails, the law schools are more directly connected to our public life, so it matters what kind of lawyers are turned out,” Shapiro argued.

He pointed to early career associates pressuring their law firms to take them off cases with certain clients, or firms parting ways with prominent partners who worked on conservative cases — such as former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who in 2022 won a major gun rights case at the Supreme Court but then had to start his own firm when his employer decided it no longer wanted to work on Second Amendment issues. 

In his book, Shapiro outlines some high-profile incidents that occurred in recent years at top law schools. In 2022, several student groups at Berkeley Law School said they would not allow any Zionists to give talks to their members, which prompted outrage by Berkeley Law’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky — who last year faced antisemitic hate from his own students. 

“I think a lot of people have come to realize that there really are issues, and it’s not just conservatives whining about this or that,” said Shapiro, who attributes many contemporary challenges on university campuses to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion bureaucracies that have increasing power over many parts of campus life. 

As President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches, some major companies are doing away with their DEI programs, a “vibe shift” that Shapiro says hasn’t yet come to American law schools. 

What Shapiro wants to see at law schools is more commitment to showcasing diverse viewpoints, and a recommitment to teaching America’s future lawyers that the legal system, though imperfect, is not broken beyond repair, even as many students now learn that the rule of law in America is “irrevocably spoiled with racism, sexism, inequality, imbalances.” He thinks fixing the problem isn’t actually that hard, if law school administrators can muster the courage to do it. 

“This is not rocket science,” said Shapiro. “It’s just a matter of enforcing your own policy and applying common sense and standing up to the mob. But all too few university leaders are willing to do that.”

Shapiro is on a book tour this spring, which includes a speaking gig at Georgetown. He hasn’t been back since his ignominious departure.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the incoming Trump administration’s nominee to be secretary of state, said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is open to a new nuclear deal with Iran, under strict conditions.

Over the course of his testimony, Rubio also framed the announcement of a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza and recent losses for Iran and its proxies in the region as creating an opportunity for major steps forward on regional normalization and Israeli-Palestinian peace, condemned the International Criminal Court’s targeting of Israel and spoke forcefully about the need to combat antisemitism globally.

Overall, Rubio’s hearing —  businesslike and cordial, focused on details of every region of the globe — marked a striking difference from the heated partisan slug-fests at confirmation hearings for other top Trump nominees this week. Rubio is expected to enjoy an easy glide-path to confirmation with overwhelming bipartisan support.

“My view is that we should be open to any arrangement that allows us to have safety and stability in the region, but one in which we’re clear-eyed,” Rubio said on the subject of Iran’s nuclear program. “Any concessions that we make to the Iranian regime, we should anticipate that they will use, as they have used in the past, to build their weapons systems and to try to restart their sponsorship of Hezbollah and other related entities around the region.”

He described the Iranian regime as at its “weakest point in recent memory, maybe ever,” with its air defenses degraded, its regional partners and proxies undermined and its economy in dire straits.

Secretary of State Nominee @marcorubio appeared at his confirmation hearing today, and discussed Israel, the ICC and Iran, among other issues. The following thread includes some of the highlights:

"How can any nation state on the planet co-exist side-by-side with a group of… pic.twitter.com/8x2Jl5oRab

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) January 15, 2025

Rubio said that this could push the Iranian regime in one of two directions: toward negotiations to buy time to rebuild, or toward rapid nuclearization as a method of regime protection.

He said that recent outreach from the regime to European nations, in the context of the expiration of snapback sanctions under the 2015 nuclear deal later this year, indicates that Iran may be leaning toward pursuing negotiations.

He said the U.S. cannot allow “under any circumstances” Iran to become a nuclear weapons state, to continue to sponsor terrorism or have the ability to attack its neighbors and the United States. He also noted that U.S. policy would be shaped by Iran’s yearslong efforts to assassinate Trump and other U.S. officials.

Rubio was careful to repeatedly draw a clear distinction between the Iranian regime of “radical Shia clerics” and the people of Iran, arguing that the gap between the regime and Iranian citizens is perhaps the widest of any country on Earth.

“In no way [are] the clerics who run that country representative of the people of that country and of its history and of the contributions it has made to humanity,” Rubio said.

He also noted that in Iran and other key U.S. adversaries, a “market” has developed for kidnapping and holding American citizens hostage, emphasizing the need for greater awareness about those risks.

Rubio described the cease-fire and hostage-release agreement between Israel and Hamas — announced in the middle of his hearing — as “a foundation to build upon” toward broader regional change, including Israeli-Palestinian peace and regional normalization. He said that the deal, in combination with the cratering of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime, had altered the landscape of the Middle East, potentially opening pathways to renewed normalization and an Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"I don't know of any nation on earth in which there is a bigger difference between the people and those who govern them than what exists in Iran. And that's a fact that needs to be made repeatedly." pic.twitter.com/cVAx1iUFCU

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) January 15, 2025

“There are opportunities now in the Middle East that did not exist 90 days ago,” Rubio said. “There are now factors at play in the Middle East that I think we can build upon and may open the door to extraordinary and historic opportunities, not just to provide for Israel’s security but ultimately begin to confront some of these other factors. But these things are going to be hard work and they’re going to require us to take advantage of those opportunities if they exist.”

Rubio said that the six-week first phase of the deal will be a critical period to build international cooperation to bring stability and new governance into Gaza. He said that both President Joe Biden and Trump deserved credit for working in tandem in the negotiations.

But he also noted that the deal did not ensure the release of all of the hostages, and emphasized that any cease-fire would be short-lived if hostages remain in Hamas captivity.

“Without the hostage situation resolved, this situation will not be resolved. It is the lynchpin,” Rubio said. “Hamas has been severely degraded, but these people, who include a number of American citizens, need to be home as soon as possible, and that will remain a priority in any engagement that we’re involved in.”

Rubio said that potential normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be “one of the most historic developments in the history of the region,” adding that the Saudis and other partners in the Middle East should be part of the post-war stabilization efforts in Gaza and that a normalization agreement would help bring “a level of stability and peace” to the entire region.

He said that a key part of expanding and strengthening the Abraham Accords is ensuring that there are benefits to the countries joining the pact, such as, for Saudi Arabia, high tech investment, economic diversification and security against the mutual Iranian threat. He said the U.S. could help provide security assurances as well.

"Any concessions we make to the Iranian regime we should anticipate that they will use as they have used in the past to rebuild their weapons systems and to try to restart their sponsorship of Hezbollah and other related entities around the region." pic.twitter.com/CjH9BNsJVA

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) January 15, 2025

“We’re still going to have some issues with UAE and with Saudi Arabia, but we also have to be pragmatic enough to understand what an enormous achievement it would be if, in fact, you not just get a cease-fire but that leads to the opportunity of a Saudi-Israeli partnership and joint recognition,” Rubio said.

One such issue with the United Arab Emirates that Rubio said the U.S. should raise is Abu Dhabi’s support for a militant group in Sudan that Rubio and the Biden administration have said is commiting genocide. At the same time, he described the UAE as a critical partner to build stability in the Middle East.

On the subject of Israeli-Palestinian peace and a two-state solution, Rubio argued that the “conditions for that have not been in place for some time” — noting that the Palestinian Authority had rejected a Trump administration peace proposal in 2020.

He argued that if Israel had not responded forcefully to the Oct. 7 attack, the country may have faced existential threats from enemies on its various borders.

But Rubio said that there has been a potential “dynamic shift in the region” that has “an historic opportunity, if appropriately structured and pursued, that changes the dynamics of what might be possible.” He emphasized that for Israel, its existential safety is the non-negotiable starting point. If Israeli security can be guaranteed, Rubio said, there may be more opportunities for a peace process.

He said the key question for the Palestinians moving forward will be the future of governance in Gaza. “[Israel] can’t turn it over to people who seek [it’s] destruction … You cannot coexist with armed elements at your border who seek your destruction and evisceration as a state.”

Pressed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — who accused the administration of secretly prohibiting Jews in the West Bank from accessing U.S. grants — Rubio committed to ending any waivers to sanctions in Gaza and the West Bank, ending what Cruz described as “discriminatory policies, including the Biden administration’s secret boycott policies” in the territory and ending the Biden administration’s sanctions regime against Israeli settlers accused of inciting violence in the West Bank.

One of the alleged boycotts, through the Development Finance Corporation, does not appear to have been revealed publicly before the hearing.

Senator @tedcruz pressed Senator @marcorubio during his secretary of state confirmation hearing on reversing discriminatory sanctions against Israeli Jews living in Judea and Samaria.

Rubio responded: "I'm confident in saying that President Trump's administration will continue… pic.twitter.com/i4p9mNkwny

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) January 15, 2025

He did not address a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) about whether the Trump administration would oppose potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Addressing the ICC prosecutions targeting Israeli leaders, Rubio said that the court had “done tremendous damage to its global credibility” with the effort, calling the case “completely flawed” and “completely offensive” in drawing equivalency between Israel and Hamas.

“Hamas carried out an atrocious operation. They sent a bunch of savages into Israel with the express and explicit purpose of targeting civilians,” Rubio said. “They deliberately targeted civilians. The ones they didn’t murder, the families they didn’t eviscerate, the people whose skulls they didn’t crack open, they kidnapped, and to this day continue to hold people, innocents that they took.”

He said that Israel cannot be expected to “coexist side-by-side with a group of savages like Hamas. They have to defend their national security and their national interest. And they didn’t target civilians.”

Rubio said that innocent people had been caught up in the war, “but there is a difference between those who in the conduct of armed action deliberately target civilians and those who do as much as they can to avoid civilians being caught up against an enemy that doesn’t wear a uniform, against an enemy that hides in tunnels, against an enemy that hides behind women and children.”

Further, Rubio said the case appeared to be a “test run” for a future case targeting U.S. leaders and military personnel.

Echoing rhetoric from other top Trump nominees, Rubio said that any individuals in the U.S. on visas who express support for Hamas or other terrorist groups should lose their visas and be forced out of the country.

Rubio committed to Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) that the Trump administration would quickly nominate a qualified individual to serve as U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, saying that the nominee “needs to be someone that enjoys broad support across different sectors.” 

He also said that the administration would promptly name a deputy envoy to run the office until an envoy is confirmed. Rubio said the antisemitism envoy role is particularly urgent in light of a recent Anti-Defamation League report that showed 60% of people hold some antisemitic views.

“Antisemitism is a unique danger. The suffering that it inflicted on the world historically, but within the last century, is unimaginable and can never be allowed to be repeated, and it’s something that we should make sure we’re constantly speaking out against, and identifying for what it is,” Rubio said. “I think the U.S.’s role in speaking out in that regard is indispensable, and we need to be forceful about it.”

Asked by multiple senators about the incoming administration’s approach to multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, Rubio said that the guiding philosophy for the administration’s engagement with such organizations will be whether engagement with them makes the U.S. safer and more prosperous. He said that no international organizations would be allowed to hold a veto over U.S. security interests.

Any funding to such organizations will require strict examination, Rubio added, suggesting that the administration may pull back funding from some of them.

He further described the U.N. Security Council as having become “almost irrelevant” and “weaponized” against the United States because of the power of Russia and China, which he called two of the top drivers of global conflict.

Rubio also said that international organizations had become “havens” for antisemitism, undermining their credibility.

Rubio characterized the new regime in Syria, led by leaders of an Al-Qaeda offshoot, as “not ideal” but nonetheless “worth exploring.”

“I do think it’s important to respond to this opportunity in Syria,” Rubio said. “It is in the national interest of the United States, if possible, to have a Syria that’s no longer a playground for ISIS, that respects religious minorities … that protects the Kurds and at the same time is not a vehicle through which Iran can spread its terrorism.”

Rubio said that an improved situation in Syria could positively impact Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and the Middle East as a whole. He said Iran and Russia would return to fill the gap in Syria if the U.S. does not “explore these opportunities.”

He described Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an “impediment” to that path forward, and said the Trump administration would communicate immediately to Erdoğan not to move against the Kurds in Syria. He said the U.S. should maintain its support for the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces — something Trump sought to pull back in his first administration.

Despite President-elect Donald Trump’s push for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza before his inauguration, some Republicans are raising concerns that the terms of the agreement currently being negotiated could hurt Israel’s ability to defend itself and eliminate future terrorist threats. 

Details are still being finalized on the deal, which could be announced in the coming days, but it includes a 42-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that requires the IDF to evacuate from the heavily populated areas of Gaza to the edges of the Gaza Strip. It will also swap dozens of hostages for hundreds of Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons, with 30 prisoners released for each civilian hostage and 50 prisoners for each female soldier. 

The agreement has been in the works under the outgoing Biden administration, with talks falling apart several times in the last year. Negotiations picked up again after the U.S. election in November, when President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan kicked their efforts to reach a deal before leaving office into overdrive. The team also began updating Trump and Steve Witkoff, the president-elect’s incoming Middle East envoy, on the talks.

Terms of the deal have not changed since Trump and Witkoff got involved, though the speed at which progress has been made has increased since the president-elect reiterated last week that “all hell will break loose” in the region if Hamas did not return the remaining hostages by the time he was sworn in. “I don’t want to hurt your negotiation,” Trump said to Witkoff before issuing the threat last Tuesday. “If they’re [the hostages] not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East.”

Behind the scenes, congressional Republicans have begun fretting that Trump could force them to back a deal that involves terms they’ve opposed for over a year. Some lawmakers and senior staffers have privately discussed the issue among themselves, though none of them have taken additional steps beyond engaging with Trump’s transition team about their concerns. 

None of the GOP lawmakers who spoke to Jewish Insider for this story praised or defended the terms of the deal as it is currently written. The few GOP lawmakers willing to voice their skepticism publicly pointed to specific details that worried them. 

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that he was “really in the skeptical column for anything related to Hamas.” Tillis expressed concern that the terror organization was included in negotiations at all.

“I feel like they’re the wrong people to be brokering the deal because, in some respects, that means you’re a part of the future of Gaza. That’s a bad thing,” Tillis told JI. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that while he wasn’t read up on the specifics of the deal as it currently stands, he had reservations about some of the terms negotiated under the outgoing administration, pointing to the release of Palestinian terrorists being held in Israeli prisons. 

“The Biden administration hasn’t shown itself to be a very effective negotiator, period,” Cornyn told JI. “I’d be concerned that he [Biden] negotiated a bad deal, which would be consistent with everything he’s done the last four years. ​​While I would applaud the release of the hostages, I am concerned that Hamas is incentivized to take more hostages so they can trade them for more prisoners.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said that he viewed the release of all remaining hostages and the complete surrender of Hamas as critical components for a deal. “I’d want all the hostages back and I’d want Hamas to drop their weapons,” Scott said of his conditions to support an agreement. 

“My attitude is that the way to end this is for Hamas to surrender,” Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI when asked about the deal. “I think it’s up to Israel to decide how this should work. It’s about Israel’s security.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) did not criticize the deal directly, but rather argued that the Biden administration’s inability to get the hostages released paired with Trump’s recent threats against Hamas proved that pressuring Israel had prolonged the conflict. 

“Everyone knows that Hamas was emboldened to extend their war against Israel, and keep these hostages in unimaginable hell, because Hamas leaders were hoping that the Biden administration would force Israel to capitulate. Everyone also knows that the hostages would not be getting out without President Trump’s threat to unleash hell against Hamas and its patrons,” Cruz told JI in a statement. “The fundamental lesson from the first Trump administration remains just as true today as it was four years ago: The way to secure peace and stability in the Middle East is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our Israeli allies.”

Given the opportunity to speak anonymously, most Republicans said they thought the deal needed to be renegotiated or tossed altogether. Two sources told JI that the Trump team had responded to their concerns by arguing that this deal served as the best vehicle to deliver on the president-elect’s promise to get this done by his first day back in office. 

“To me the fundamentals of this deal are flawed. My heart goes out to the victims’ families, but what we’re trying to do is to also make sure that we have something that has staying power and gives us certainty that there’s not going to be another tranche of victims,” one Republican senator said. “I’m not sure that we’re there yet. I don’t know that this deal works practically, so regardless of what may occur in the waning hours of the Biden administration, I believe that there are going to be additional requirements for the new administration to impose.”

“If we’re not getting basic concessions like every hostage returned or other guarantees, then what are we getting out of this Biden deal? I don’t see how it is sustainable if Hamas is still in the picture,” another GOP senator told JI. 

Those who responded optimistically to the developments largely focused on Trump’s influence in moving the deal along after multiple failed efforts to bring the remaining hostages home. They did not, however, praise the deal itself. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said that he hadn’t been tracking the most recent developments, “but obviously, any news that suggests we’re coming closer to a resolution in that part of the world would be welcome news.”

Asked if he was confident Trump and Witkoff wouldn’t endorse a deal that hurt Israel, Thune answered affirmatively. “I haven’t followed closely, but I’m aware of some of the conversations that have been engaged in around those issues. Yes, I am confident. I think President Trump and Mr. Witkoff will be very careful to ensure that Israel’s interests are protected and preserved.”

Another GOP senator, speaking on condition of anonymity, told JI, “I’m not worried about Trump accepting a deal that isn’t strong enough for Israel, because I can’t imagine [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu would feel that kind of pressure to take a weak deal.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) says he worried that Biden, Blinken and Sullivan would take any deal as they depart the White House because they were “trying to create their legacy.” Regardless, he said he would get behind an agreement if Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, gave it their blessing. 

“Unless Trump and Rubio sign off on it, I wouldn’t support it. If they can look me in the eye and tell me that this does not hurt Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels, then I would consider it,” Kennedy told JI.

Kennedy added that any deal must “keep that Philadelphi corridor secure, because that’s how the weapons are getting in. They’re coming in from Egypt.”

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to JI’s request for comment.

Pete Hegseth, the veteran and Fox News personality turned President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of defense, testified at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday that his Christian faith dictates his commitment to supporting Israel and that he wants to see the U.S. ally kill “every last member of Hamas.”

The hearing provided few more specific details, however, on how the likely next secretary of defense plans to approach the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, which have seen U.S. troops under fire from and engaged in active strikes on Iranian proxies, or the prospect of more direct conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

After Hegseth was interrupted by several protesters affiliated with the radical group Code Pink, who called him a misogynist and a Christian Zionist while he delivered his opening statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asked Hegseth to share where he stands on the Jewish state.

“I’m not really sure why that is a bad thing,” Cotton said. “I’m a Christian, I’m a Zionist. Zionism is that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in the ancient holy land where they lived since the dawn of history. Do you consider yourself a Christian Zionist?”

“I am a Christian and I robustly support the State of Israel and its existential defense and the way America comes alongside them as their great ally,” Hegseth replied.

Cotton went on to ask if Hegseth supports Israel in its war to eliminate Hamas. Hegseth replied: “I do. I support Israel in destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.”

"I support Israel in destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.”

Watch more of @SenTomCotton's exchange with @PeteHegseth below and read our full story from @marcrod97 and @emilyfjacobs on his confirmation hearing to be secretary of defense here: https://t.co/b9cuVW4v4R pic.twitter.com/k8EHicax6j

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) January 15, 2025

Hegseth also said earlier in the hearing that, in order to properly counter China, the U.S. military will need to focus on “reorienting away from entanglement in the Middle East and reorienting the behemoth that is the Pentagon toward new priorities, specifically the Indo-Pacific.”

He said the Biden administration has failed to sufficiently execute on that goal, which successive administrations said was their priority. “We’re going to start by ensuring the institution understands that, as far as threats abroad, the CCP is front and center, and obviously defending our homeland as well,” Hegseth continued.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), as the hearing was ongoing, expressed confidence to reporters that Hegseth would be confirmed.

“He’s doing a great job,” Scott said. “He’s going to be confirmed as the next secretary of defense and he’s going to do a great job.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), once the most prominent Hegseth skeptic on the GOP side, said after the hearing that she was satisfied with his responses and plans to support him. Ernst’s announcement will likely help lock in the support of other Senate Republicans as well.

Hegseth had to navigate choppy political waters under questioning from Democrats on the panel, being pressed on allegations of alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement and general inexperience and lack of qualifications for the job. Democrats also challenged him on past comments opposing women in military service; his opposition to diversity programs; his support for pardons for convicted war criminals such as Clint Lorrance, a former Army lieutenant convicted of killing two Afghan civilians; and his claims that the Biden administration had politicized the military.

Several Republicans dedicated their questioning to pushing back on these accusations, leaving the hearing overall light on the specifics of Hegseth’s plans for the Department of Defense or strategic approach to the various conflicts the U.S. faces around the globe.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who focused her questioning on Hegseth’s past comments opposing women taking combat roles in the military, told reporters afterward that she was frustrated she had not been able to ask Hegseth about issues like Iran, Russia and China and other global threats, noting that he had not met privately with rank-and-file Senate Democrats.

Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) suggested in his opening statement that one of Hegseth’s strengths is his skill as a “top-shelf communicator,” and that Hegseth would be focused on “strategic-level priorities” while he should have “exceptional subordinates who will run the day-to-day affairs” of directing the U.S. military.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who focused his questioning on Hegseth’s qualifications and allegations of financial mismanagement at veterans’ charities he ran, told reporters, “I think he would be a good communicator, I support his service as spokesperson for the Pentagon, but not as the manager for 3.4 million Americans putting their lives on the line, who deserve someone who will make life-and-death decisions with the kind of experience and expertise that is necessary to protect our nation.”

Blumenthal also alleged that the FBI background check into Hegseth was insufficiently rigorous.

Hegseth also expressed strong opposition during the hearing to counter-extremism programs implemented during the Biden administration, driven by concerns about potential white supremacist and neo-Nazi radicalization and recruitment in military ranks.

The nominee described concerns about right-wing extremism in the armed forces as “a made-up boogeyman,” and accused “leftist leadership” of extremism.

The Anti-Defamation League had supported those programs — which Republicans have said over-played the nature of the threat and sowed division among service members.

Responding to the criticism of Hegseth for being unfaithful to his wife and abusing alcohol, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) accused his Democratic colleagues of hypocrisy, pointing out that senators on both sides of the aisle had been drunk at evening votes at the Capitol and had cheated on their wives. 

“I think it’s so hypocritical of senators, especially on the other side, to be talking about his qualifications, and yet your qualifications aren’t any better,” Mullin said. “You guys make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man’s made a mistake, and you want to sit there and say that he’s not qualified. Give me a joke. It is so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself as this higher standard. You forget you got a big plank in your eye.”

Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who chairs the Republican Jewish Coalition, was one of two witnesses who introduced Hegseth at the hearing, alongside incoming National Security Advisor Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL).

Former President Donald Trump said in an interview released on Sunday that expanding the Abraham Accords would be “an absolute priority” if he wins the election.

“Everyone wants to be in it,” he said in an interview with Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned news channel, claiming he would have added “12 to 15 countries literally within a period of a year” if he had won the 2020 presidential election. “If I win, that will be an absolute priority,” he added. “It’s peace in the Middle East — we need it.”

Trump also reiterated his controversial claim that Iran would have joined the Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab neighbors, during a hypothetical second term.

“I make the statement, and it sounds foolish but it’s not foolish — I think even Iran would have been in, because Iran was desperate to make a deal,” he said. “They had no money.”

He declined to elaborate on how he would address Iran’s efforts to create a nuclear weapon while in office, even as he recently suggested he is open to talks with the Islamic Republic about a renewed nuclear deal that he himself ended while in office.

“They won’t acquire it,” he said. “Now they may get it if they get it very quickly. I’m not president, so I won’t have much to do with that.”

Trump also did not discuss whether he would seek to include Saudi Arabia in the Accords, as the Gulf kingdom has indicated that forging diplomatic ties would be contingent on Israel accepting a Palestinian state. 

In the interview, focused on Middle East policy, Trump described Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as a “visionary” and a “great guy” who is “respected all over the world.” He vowed to bolster U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia, saying Vice President Kamala Harris would damage the relationship.

Trump argued that U.S. relations with Israel would be strengthened under his leadership, suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more receptive to hearing from him than President Joe Biden. “He does listen to me,” Trump said of Netanyahu, speaking after the killing last week of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza.

Trump speculated that many of the hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza have already been killed. “I’m sure many of them are dead,” he said in the interview. “It’s a very sad thing. What’s going to happen when they find out that there are very few hostages, which is probably what they’re going to find out.”

“Even early on, I think a lot of those hostages were dead,” he added. “It’s not even believable when you think about it, but I think pretty early on, there were a lot that were gone.”

Repeating a claim he has made several times during the campaign, Trump said that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack would never have occurred if he had been president.

Without elaborating on a plan, he said he would stop the war in Gaza if elected and that he would bring stability to the region. “If I win, we’re going to have peace in the Middle East, and soon,” he said.

As Tucker Carlson faces backlash for airing a friendly interview with a Holocaust revisionist on his online show this week, some prominent Republicans are publicly raising concerns about the far-right pundit’s influential position in former President Donald Trump’s inner circle — as he increasingly imports extreme views and fringe conspiracy theories into party discourse.

In recent months, Carlson has played a key role in assisting Trump’s campaign as an informal adviser. Behind the scenes, he lobbied aggressively for Trump to choose Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate — anointing an ideological heir to the MAGA movement. The former Fox News host also helped broker Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Trump, who last week rewarded the former Democrat with a leadership position on his presidential transition team — unnerving some party members.

In July, Carlson, 55, delivered a major primetime address on the last night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he sat with Trump in the former president’s VIP box. Later this month, Carlson is also slated to appear with Vance for a live interview in Pennsylvania, part of a nationwide tour of battleground states in the leadup to the election.

Meanwhile, Carlson, who helms an independent streaming service, has continued to invite a range of controversial figures onto his show, including some guests who have promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as anti-Israel sentiments that he has abstained from challenging. But his decision to host a self-proclaimed podcast historian, Darryl Cooper, who has praised Adolf Hitler and believes Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II, has drawn unusually fierce criticism from top party members.

In the interview, Cooper diminished the Holocaust by claiming that “millions of prisoners of war” had “ended up dead” in concentration camps, suggesting the Nazis did not have genocidal aims against Jews but were simply “unprepared” for the war, among other false assertions. Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, said on Wednesday that Carlson and Cooper “engaged in one of the most repugnant Holocaust denial displays of the last years,” calling their discussion “antisemitic, ahistorical” and “an affront to the victims.”

The interview has alarmed leading Jewish Republicans who are frustrated that Carlson would approvingly amplify such views and dismayed by his influence in Trump’s campaign, where he is a close ally of Donald Trump Jr., a key adviser to his father.

While many Republican lawmakers have been reluctant to publicly criticize Carlson, a handful of GOP House members took aim at the commentator on Wednesday, underscoring the shocking nature of his recent interview with Cooper.

“Platforming known Holocaust revisionists is deeply disturbing — during my time in the State Assembly, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to help pass legislation aimed at ensuring all students in New York received proper education on the Holocaust, something Mr. Cooper clearly never had,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), whose district in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley includes a sizable Jewish constituency, said in a statement to Jewish Insider.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a Republican facing a tough reelection, said that “Hitler conducted mass genocide against the Jewish people and triggered the most deadly war in human history,” arguing that there is “no whitewashing this evil man’s history.”

“I admired Winston Churchill for galvanizing Great Britain to fight alone after the fall of France and eventually defeating Nazi Germany with the U.S. and USSR,” Bacon added in a statement shared with JI. “Revisionist history on the Holocaust is a lie and does harm in the fight against antisemitism.”

Trump’s rapport with Carlson, who has long been rumored to harbor presidential ambitions of his own, also threatens to jeopardize his campaign’s efforts to make inroads with Jewish voters in key battleground states who have grown disillusioned with the Democratic Party in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. 

“He seems to have tremendous sway on the campaign and on Donald Trump —  and that doesn’t make me happy at all,” Fred Zeidman, a top GOP donor and Republican Jewish Coalition board member who backed Nikki Haley for president, said in an interview with JI on Wednesday. “Tucker Carlson is not leading the Republican Party in the direction of a party that I have been proud to be a member of.”

Eric Levine, a prominent GOP fundraiser who is reluctantly supporting Trump — and has assailed his decision to invite Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, into the fold — called Carlson “a very troubling person” with “hateful” and “very odd views of the world.” The commentator has espoused “populist, isolationist” sentiments and “antisemitic tropes,” Levine told JI, voicing reservations with his proximity to Trump’s campaign. “I’d rather Tucker Carlson be further away than closer.”

Carlson’s team did not respond to a request for comment from JI, nor did the Trump campaign.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish campus activist and erstwhile progressive Democrat who recently turned away from his party over its approach to Israel and antisemitism, delivered a speech at the RNC in July, where he voiced his support for Trump’s policies on anti-Jewish discrimination.

But Kestenbaum, who is scheduled to address the RJC’s annual leadership summit in Las Vegas on Thursday, suggested that he is still uncomfortable with some aspects of Trump’s coalition. “I loudly and publicly walked out of the RNC when Tucker Carlson spoke,” he said in a text message to JI on Wednesday, “and there should be no place for him or his politics of hate and falsity in our political system.”

He said he would continue to “call out far-left and far-right antisemitism” as he sees it.

As Trump draws some heightened scrutiny for his association with Carlson and other figures on the extreme right, there are no signs that the former president is distancing himself from the former Fox News host amid a tightening race with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I continue to believe that Donald Trump is best served by appealing to the center of the party,” Levine, who is also an RJC board member, explained to JI on Wednesday. “We can hit the Ronald Reagan wing of the party to appeal to Reagan Republicans, moderates, independents, women. I just think that’s a more fertile area for votes, and I would encourage him to focus there and distinguish himself from Kamala Harris on policy.”

But as long as Carlson continues to have Trump’s ear, that hope seems unlikely to be fulfilled. “I wish Donald Trump wasn’t as close to him,” Zeidman said. “We’ve got to get our party back — and that’s not where Tucker Carlson is taking it.”

This week’s “Inside the Newsroom” conversation features former Trump State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus talking about her trip to Qatar and its role in the region, and her thoughts on how a second Trump term would approach foreign policy.

Here is a clip from today’s conversation:

Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), the two Republican incumbents running to defend their seats in the Georgia special election runoff in January, appeared to publicly acknowledge President Donald Trump’s defeat in an off-the-record Zoom call hosted by the Republican Jewish Coalition on Wednesday — as they emphasized the need for the GOP to maintain control of the Senate as a buffer to Biden’s domestic and foreign policy. 

“We know what this change of command at the top will mean with our foreign relations, and it gives us great pause about [the] U.S.-Israeli relationship — the progress we’ve made in the last couple of years,” Perdue said in his opening remarks, in audio obtained by Jewish Insider, referencing the recent peace accord between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain and the withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran. “This is historic and we don’t want to give that up. And so one of the things that is so much in play here is, if we can keep the majority in the Senate, we can at least be a buffer on some of the things that the Biden camp has been talking about in terms of their foreign policy.” 

“We really need to protect what we’ve done under President Trump these last four years, both in foreign policy, economic policy and so forth — and the only way to do that is to hold these two seats,” Perdue added. “And by the way, we can have a tempering impact on foreign policy. You’ve heard Biden talk about he wants to reinstate the JCPOA. Well, there are things that we can do in the Senate that can slow that down and actually have a tempering effect.”

The Republicans currently hold 52-48 majority in the Senate. If the two senators lose to their Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, in the January 5 special Senate election, the Democrats will hold a working majority with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.  

During the call, first reported by The Washington Post, Loeffler echoed her colleague’s sentiment by stressing the importance of a split government. “David and I are the firewall to stopping socialism in America, to stopping their bad policies,” she stressed. “If we don’t hold the line right now, we will never get another chance to change the country back — because they will abolish the filibuster, they’ll add D.C. statehood, pack the court, and on and on.” 

Trump is expected to hold a campaign rally in support of Perdue and Loeffler in Valdosta, Georgia, on Saturday. The president has refused to concede and continues to claim that the election was illegitimate.

Loeffler also suggested that Republicans will seek to stop some of Biden’s cabinet appointments during the confirmation hearings, and challenge them on their record during the Obama administration. “The work that has happened over the last four years, we have to preserve that — a strengthened Israel, a weakened Iran — we have to make sure that that continues,” she said. “And if they put up officials that have a track record of not standing with Israel, of doing the wrong thing with Iran, then we’re going to hold them accountable,” Loeffler continued. “We are going to see a lot of folks from the Obama administration come back, which is a great chance for us to review their records and hold them accountable for their track records which, in many cases, failed the U.S.-Israel relationship.” 

The pair did not discuss the possibility of a second Trump term, which would invalidate their narrative about serving as a buffer to a Biden administration. “This is our last chance. We won’t give it a second chance,” Perdue stressed on the call. 

Perdue also compared Trump to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was defeated in 1945 towards the end of World War II. “[Churchill] held the world together for a few years during World War II… [and] just before the end of the war, as the outcome was visible, his party was removed. And guess what he did for the next four years? He fought off communism in Great Britain,” Perdue explained. “And here we are in very similar circumstances. Kelly and I are up for this fight. We know this is a fight to the death about socialism. If we stop and hold the line right now, I believe we put a stop to this to radicalism that has somehow taken over for the Democratic Party.” 

RJC Executive Director told the Post, “A lot of the focus was on the risks associated with a Senate majority led by Chuck Schumer. Any inference that either of these two are not supportive of the president just isn’t true, and in fact they’re all going to be campaigning together in Georgia. Both Senator Perdue and Senator Loeffler strongly supports President Trump and President Trump supports them.”

A second Donald Trump administration would “do even more to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Israel,” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) said in a pitch to participants at a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Orthodox Union on Wednesday, highlighting the administration’s Mideast policy achievements.

Zeldin praised the Trump administration’s record on Israel, contrasting it with the way the Obama administration handled the U.S.-Israel relationship since he entered Congress in 2015. 

“Finally our country was starting to treat Israel like Israel and Iran like Iran, and I do not want to go back to my experience of my first term,” Zeldin, who is running for reelection in New York’s 1st congressional district,, told the group. “I would love to see us build on his progress.” 

“Israelis know that President Trump has had their back every step of the way,” Zeldin continued “Just think of the possibilities if President Trump has four more years in office. Because, with President Trump, he does not wake up the next day and look to just move on to the next unrelated battle. When he scores a win, he asks himself and asks his advisors, ‘What else can we do?’ That’s why we’ve had so many successes in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship — because the president wakes up the next day saying that he wants to accomplish even more.”

Earlier this week, the OU hosted a conversation with surrogates from former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. 

In a separate Zoom call hosted by the Biden campaign on Wednesday, Israeli-American mogul Haim Saban said Trump’s moves on Israel were largely symbolic. He compared the Jerusalem embassy move to a “bar mitzvah,” noting that only one country, Guatemala, followed the U.S. lead and moved its embassy to Jerusalem. 

Another Central American country, Honduras, is expected to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before the end of the year, according to a social media post from Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández last month. 

Saban was also skeptical that the president’s withdrawal from the Iran deal had bolstered Israel’s security.

“In the test of results — where are we from a security standpoint — we have Iran opening a new front against Israel from Syria and we have Iran with three times more enriched uranium,” Saban explained. “You draw your own conclusion.”

Saban, who has maintained close ties with Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and reportedly helped broker the recent normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, suggested that the president was only a participant of a “photo op” and did not deserve credit for the Abraham Accords. “All the credit should really be going here to Jared Kushner and [Mideast peace envoy] Avi Berkowitz, who worked really hard on it,” Saban said.

After staying on the sidelines during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Saban, a major Democratic donor and bundler, endorsed Biden in September, hosting a virtual fundraiser in support of the Democratic nominee.

Highlighting Biden’s longstanding support for Israel, Saban said, “The facts speak for themselves. Facts, you know, are a very stubborn thing. Look at the track record. Andall Jews in America [who] care about the U.S.-Israel alliance know that they can sleep peacefully as far as Israel’s security goes under a Biden presidency.”

In a new book looking back at his time in the military and in several presidential administrations, former national security advisor H.R. McMaster expounds on what he thought were “fundamental flaws” in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and why he tried to persuade President Donald Trump not to withdraw from the deal. 

In Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, released on Tuesday, McMaster called the original JCPOA negotiated by former President Barack Obama “an extreme case of strategic narcissism based on wishful thinking” that led to “self-delusion and, ultimately the deception of the American people.” 

Yet, when Trump wanted to make good on his campaign promise to leave the deal, McMaster made clear his opposition to withdrawing from the accord. In the book, McMaster explains that he wanted the U.S. to maintain leverage to punish Iran for its behavior on matters unrelated to the Iranian nuclear program and to get the parties in the agreement to fix the deal’s flaws. McMaster said he also wanted to avoid giving Tehran the opportunity to portray itself as a victim. But as he attempted to work on a comprehensive Iran strategy, McMaster wrote, Trump grew “impatient.” 

McMaster details how he intervened in former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s efforts to certify the deal in April 2017, and how he successfully lobbied the president to recertify the agreement over the next two 90-day deadlines as required under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. “We had created a window of opportunity for our allies to demonstrate the viability of staying in the deal while imposing costs on Iran,” McMaster writes. “That window closed soon after I departed the White House.” A month after McMaster left the administration, Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the deal. 

The former national security official accuses the Obama administration of ignoring Iran’s behavior in the region and avoiding confrontation in an effort to preserve the accord. According to McMaster, Obama officials “focused on selling the deal rather than subjecting it to scrutiny” by using a “red herring” talking point — the Iraq War — to pose “the false dilemma” of either supporting the deal or going to war with Iran. 

McMaster also offers his view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Trump peace plan announced in early 2020. Trump’s moves on Israel, he writes, “communicated support for Israel, but also removed incentives that might have been crucial in a future agreement.” While he described the rollout of the peace plan as “dead on arrival” due to lack of participation from Palestinian leaders, McMaster posits that the plan itself may at some point “help resurrect the possibility of a two-state solution.” 

The book itself is not a tell-all on the Trump administration. McMaster does not write about being excluded from Trump’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s trip to Israel, or his disputes with Trump and Jared Kushner. “This is not the book that most people wanted me to write… a tell-all about my experience in the White House to confirm their opinions of Donald Trump,” McMaster writes in his preface. “Although writing such a book might be lucrative, I did not believe that it would be useful or satisfactory for most readers.”

McMaster accuses the Russians and the alt-right movement of leading a campaign against him, under the hashtag #FireMcMaster, because they viewed him as a threat to their agenda of undermining America’s national security. McMaster writes that the attacks against him were “often inconsistent” in nature. “For example, one caricature on social media portrayed me as a puppet of billionaire George Soros and the Rothschild family (both of whom were frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories), while articles in the pseudo-media charged me and others on the NSC staff as being ‘anti-Israel’ and soft on Iran,” McMaster recalls.

President Donald Trump implored American Jewish leaders to back his administration’s efforts to bring peace in the Middle East and support his reelection bid during an annual High Holidays conference call with rabbis and Jewish community leaders on Wednesday afternoon. 

“Whatever you can do in terms of November 3rd, it’s going to be very important because if we don’t win, Israel is in big trouble,” Trump told participants on the call, adding that if he loses reelection and Republicans lose control of the Senate, “you are going to lose control of Israel. Israel will never be the same. I don’t know if it can recover from that.” 

Trump noted the previous lack of widespread support among Jewish voters for his campaign, saying he was surprised to have only received 25% of the Jewish vote in 2016. “Here I have a son-in-law and a daughter who are Jewish, I have beautiful grandchildren that are Jewish, I have all of these incredible achievements,”” he said. “I’m amazed that it seems to be almost automatically a Democrat vote. President Obama is the worst president, I would say by far, that Israel has ever had in the United States… And yet the Democrats get 75%.”

“I hope you can do better with that,” Trump continued. “I hope you could explain to people what’s going on. We have to get more support from the Jewish people — for Israel… We have to be able, to hopefully, do well on November 3, and I hope you can get everybody out there. Otherwise, everything that we’ve done, I think, could come undone and we wouldn’t like that.”

On the call, White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner touted the administration’s record. “I can honestly say that there’s been no greater president for the Jewish people in history than Donald Trump,” Kushner said.

Trump ended the call by saying, “We really appreciate you. We love your country also.”

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign will launch a Jewish outreach team on Wednesday aimed at promoting the Trump administration’s record on Israel and efforts to combat the rise in antisemitism ahead of the November presidential election.

The group, named Jewish Voices for Trump, will be co-chaired by Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, along with Republican Jewish Coalition board member Wayne Berman, former Trump White House aide Boris Epshteyn and Julie Strauss Levin, wife of TV and radio personality Mark Levin. 

Trump reportedly scolded Adelson in a phone call last month for not spending enough on his reelection. Adelson “chose not to come back at Trump,” Politico reported. Axios later reported that Adelson has signaled he is poised to spend big to support the president’s reelection.

“President Trump has fought against antisemitism in America and throughout the world while continuing to ensure the long-term success and security of the Jewish state,” Epshteyn, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign, told Jewish Insider. Citing the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the recently signed peace accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Epshteyn said, “Trump’s record on Israel and the Middle East can be summed up in four words: promises made, promises kept.” 

A number of prominent Jewish Republicans sit on the group’s advisory board, including former Mideast peace envoy Jason Greenblatt, Houston-based GOP donor Fred Zeidman, Chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad Paul Packer, CEO of Miller Strategies Jeff Miller, Fox Paine & Company CEO Saul Fox, Boca Raton-based investor Marc Goldman, CEO of Hudson Bay Capital Sander Gerber, MizMaa Ventures co-founder Yitz Applbaum, nursing home operator Louis Scheiner, Blackstone’s Eli Miller, Mark Levenson, Dr. Jeffrey Feingold, and Haim Chera, son of the late Stanley Chera, among others.

“Never before have we seen an American president more dedicated to uplifting and protecting the Jewish people at home and around the world,” a Trump campaign official noted about the group’s launch. 

In addition to highlighting the administration’s Israel policy and the measures signed by the president to combat antisemitism, the group will also focus on Trump’s economic and trade policies. 

Epshteyn stressed that Trump’s record stands in stark contrast to the Democratic Party, which he referred to as the “radical hateful Democrats.”

In Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s new book, Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House, the former White House press secretary describes her relationship with her former colleague Josh Raffel, whose White House communications responsibilities included the Israeli-Palestinian file.

“Josh and I hadn’t known each other before starting in the White House. He was a liberal, aggressive, foulmouthed Jew from New York City who had spent most of his career working in Hollywood. I was pretty much his total opposite,” Sanders writes in the book, obtained by Jewish Insider, in a chapter detailing what happened behind the scenes of President Donald Trump’s first visit to Saudi Arabia in 2017.  

Raffel, who also served as a spokesperson for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, was senior vice president at Hiltzik Strategies and head of public relations at Blumhouse Productions before joining the Trump administration in 2017. He left the White House in the spring of 2018.

Sanders writes that “despite our differences, I had grown to love Josh. He is one of the funniest people I know, intensely loyal, and probably the most talented communications strategist I’ve ever worked with. Nobody in the White House could work a story better than Josh, and he was always one of the first colleagues I turned to for help on the toughest assignments.” 

Raffel told JI that Sanders “is a close friend.” 

In the book, Sanders also describes her close relationship with Ivanka. “When I was home sick with strep throat and high fever Ivanka had matzo ball soup sent over from her favorite deli,” she writes.

White House Mideast peace envoy Avi Berkowitz had the honor of posting President Donald Trump’s tweet announcing a groundbreaking normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates last Thursday, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner revealed in an interview published on Wednesday. 

“[Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications] Dan Scavino was sitting in the back, and he let Avi push the button,” Kushner detailed in an interview with Ami Magazine, a weekly print-only publication widely read in the Orthodox community. “Avi has been working around the clock, and it’s really an incredible deal. He did a great job, so we all thought it would be an honor for him to do that.”

The presidential tweet came after a 15-minute phone call between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. “HUGE breakthrough today! Historic Peace Agreement between our two GREAT friends, Israel and the United Arab Emirates!” A follow up tweet by Trump read. 

Kushner shared with the publication what went on behind the scenes in the Oval Office ahead of Trump’s public statement: “We made the call in the Oval Office with a bunch of people on our team who wanted to be there. After we hung up, everyone in the room started to applaud. Then the president stood up and started clapping too, because he realized that we were all clapping for peace. As we were getting ready to bring in the media, we sent out the tweet which was all set up and ready to go. Dan Scavino was sitting in the back and Avi pushed the button. Then we brought the press in and shared what had happened with the world.”

The White House senior advisor noted that this was the first time Trump had given someone from his wider team the permission to tweet out from his account. “The president never lets anyone do it. It’s always either the president or Dan [Scavino],” Kushner noted. 

Berkowitz and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman also spoke to Ami, which featured them on the front cover as “the peacemakers.” 

The two seemed to offer differing views on the shelving of Netanyahu’s annexation plan as part of the U.A.E.-Israel accord. “The application of sovereignty to areas of the West Bank is something that our vision for peace accommodates, as we don’t fundamentally disagree with it,” Berkowitz told the magazine. “We believe that for the next few months it’s worthwhile to continue advancing the cause of peace and suspend the discussion about what the application of sovereignty and recognition by the United States would look like. We were in the middle of those discussions, and quite honestly we would still have some work to do should that path be opened up in the future.” 

The administration official suggested that Netanyahu “understands the historic achievement” of shifting gears away from his plan to annex parts of the West Bank and take the route of peace with the Arab world and “that for the foreseeable future the Israeli people are going to be excited about following that path.” 

Friedman, however, noted that the deal “doesn’t require that the sovereignty efforts that have begun be reversed. They’re just going to be delayed a little bit… We were on the path of support for the application of sovereignty to the settlements, and we were certainly moving along that path, when this opportunity came along. We had the intellectual flexibility to say, ‘Let’s shift gears a bit, because this is better.’” 

The ambassador also expressed his dismay at the ongoing political crisis in Israel. “The unity government hasn’t really created the unity I would have hoped for,” Friedman explained. “Jewish unity around the world is important, and Jewish unity within Israel is very important. I think we are still challenged in that regard, and because those political currents are still working their way through the system, those who see political advantages or disadvantages to making strong statements will continue to do so.”

This post has been updated to clarify Ambassador Friedman’s remarks on Israel’s political crisis.

Tony Gonzales recently spent two years in Washington, working as a Department of Defense legislative fellow for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Now, the former Navy master chief petty officer is looking to return to the nation’s capital — as the congressman representing Texas’s 23rd congressional district.

Gonzales, who comes armed with the endorsement of President Donald Trump, is likely to win Tuesday’s runoff against another veteran, Raul Reyes. Gonzales came out on top in the March 3 primary, taking 28% of the vote to Reyes’ 23%. The winner will go up against Gina Ortiz Jones, who handily beat her opponents in the Democratic primary.

Jones narrowly lost her 2018 bid against Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who announced last August that he would not be seeking a fourth term. This year, Jones is favored to win in the district that The Cook Political Report rates as “Lean Democratic.”

But Gonzales is up for the challenge, telling Jewish Insider that he can deliver a victory against Jones in November where Reyes cannot. “I have the experience of being on Capitol Hill, drafting legislation, staffing, hearings, doing constituent services,” he said. 

Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, agreed that Reyes would be unlikely to win in November.

“Whoever wins [the runoff]… will have a real uphill struggle against Gina Ortiz Jones,” Jones continued. “It’s going to be really tough for Gonzales to win that seat.”

But Gonzales is optimistic that voters in the district, which has flipped between Democratic and Republican control in recent years but was held by Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla for 14 years, will turn out for him in November. He pointed out that he’s a Hispanic candidate running in a majority-Hispanic district, an advantage over Jones.

***

Should he win, Gonzales would bring to Congress a font of Middle East policy expertise. While in the military, he was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. And while working for Rubio, he focused on defense, national security and intelligence issues, with a particular focus on the Middle East.

“I spent my entire adult life basically at war,” he said. “A big part of my message is taking care of veterans, on one hand. The other aspect of it is for America to be firm. I believe in peace through strength.”

In 2018, as a national security fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Gonzales visited Israel, which he said helped shape his view of the region and understanding of the geopolitical situation.

“I read about the Golan Heights and studied it and I understood its strategic importance,” he said, explaining that seeing the situation on the ground allowed him to realize that the area was more than a military interest. “But when you visit it, the part that is left out is there’s this amazing winery just miles from the Golan Heights. So in my eyes, yeah, of course Israel would never give up that area.”

Julia Schulman, senior director of special projects at FDD, told JI, “Gina and Tony are both members of FDD’s non-partisan national security alumni network. Both are dedicated public servants who were actively engaged in our programming. Both have exciting careers ahead and we look forward to seeing how they continue to serve our country.”

Gonzales said he does not believe the U.S. should dictate any specific peace plan for the region, nor should it dictate whether Israel should be allowed to unilaterally annex portions of the West Bank.

“The Israelis and the Palestinians, I think, should lead the way,” he said. “I think [America’s] role is to bring those [actors] together and open up a dialogue, not necessarily dictate what that peace process should be like.”

He added, however, “my experience in the military has taught me that you really can’t have peace unless you have partners that are willing to have that discussion. So I think it starts there.”

Although Gonzales believes that peace negotiations also are the best way to resolve the U.S. conflict with Iran, he did not support the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with the regime.

“I’d love nothing more than Iran to come to the negotiating table and have a dialogue and a discussion. That’s, I believe, how we solve a long-term solution,” he said. “In the meantime, though, that region of the world views strength through power.”

In this sense, Gonzales said, the Trump administration’s tougher posture toward Iran, including the strike which killed Gen. Qassem Solemaini, has been a net positive.

Gonzales — who was a Navy cryptologist — said Iran, as well as Russia and China, pose major cyber threats to the U.S., including U.S. elections.

“Our greatest [external] adversaries are China, Russia and Iran,” he said. “The number one thing is having the dialogue and saying, ‘Yes, China is trying to impact our elections. Yes, Russia is trying to impact our elections. Yes, Iran and others are trying to impact our elections.’ Why? Because they’re our adversaries. They’re trying to undermine us. And I think just being able to say that is already a win that we don’t have on Capitol Hill.”

***

What was anticipated to be a fairly quiet runoff in southwestern Texas between two military veterans has become the site of a high-stakes clash between major players in the national GOP. 

Gonzales has the support of Trump, Hurd and other GOP leaders, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) broke with the party to support Reyes, boosting him with a massive ad campaign that raised eyebrows at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

And on the eve of the primary, Trump’s campaign sent a strongly worded letter to Reyes’s campaign, admonishing him for using the president’s name and image on a mailer. 

“President Trump and his campaign do not support your candidacy in TX-23’s July 14 runoff primary,” Trump campaign executive director Michael Glassner said in the letter, which was first reported by Politico. “Your campaign’s efforts to make voters believe otherwise are deceptive and unfair.”

Reyes’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Jones said Trump’s endorsement helped shore up Gonzales’ campaign by shielding him from Reyes’s claims that he’s too much of an establishment Republican.

“I think Gonzales is going to [win that runoff] pretty easily,” Jones told JI.

But if he doesn’t, Jones predicts the race will drop off the radar of the GOP. “If Reyes wins, I would expect national Republicans to pull the plug on [TX]23,” Jones told JI. “If Reyes wins, [the district] will cease to be a real priority.”

Todd McMurtry is a seasoned trial attorney who first received national exposure after representing a student filmed in a confrontation with protesters after last year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit, filed against media organizations for their coverage of the incident, drew national headlines. But it was President Donald Trump’s tweets on Friday against libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) that put the spotlight on McMurtry, who is challenging the four-term incumbent for his seat in Congress.

Details: McMurtry, who launched his campaign in January, is challenging Massie in the June 23 Republican primary for Kentucky’s 4th congressional district. In 2018, Massie won re-election with 62% of the vote.

Background: McMurtry, 57, grew up in Covington, Kentucky. After graduating from Covington Latin School and Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, he studied law at Salmon P. Chase College of Law, affiliated with Northern Kentucky University. He now works as an attorney focusing on mediating commercial disputes. In 2019, after 28 years of practicing law, McMurtry was selected among the top 50 Kentucky super lawyers. He also spent several years in Washington D.C. as a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee.

Stepping up: In a phone interview with Jewish Insider on Sunday, McMurtry said he was in Dallas, Texas, last fall visiting his daughter and grandchildren when the entire family caught a cold. “So I spent too much time on social media and I saw things that Thomas Massie had posted that were, I thought, pretty upsetting,” he recounted. “I followed him for a long time and saw his questionable votes. And I said we’ve really had enough of this guy and his crazy votes — we have to do something about it. I posted something on Facebook and people started to contact me to run for office. So I did some inquiries and polling and all that stuff and decided that we had a shot and I was going to try it.”

Massie’s move: It was Massie’s push last Thursday for a recorded vote — a move that forced a number of lawmakers to return to Washington amid the coronavirus crisis — that upended the course of McMurtry’s campaign. “[Massie] seems to be generally an attention seeker on libertarian issues, and so we weren’t surprised to learn that he planned another stunt,” McMurtry noted. “But to be honest, the way he self-destructed was surprising I think to everyone. It doesn’t seem to have any logic or reason other than just a pure adherence to libertarian principles, which are not the principles of the 4h district in Kentucky.”

Trump factor: McMurtry told JI that Massie’s recent actions will push away the president’s supporters, estimating that Republicans in the district “are over 90% pro-President Trump. They don’t like to see what [Massie] did. And I think he shot himself in the foot.” As for Trump, “of course, we would welcome his endorsement,” McMurtry said. In an attempt to get the president’s ear when he visited his Mar-a-Lago resort last month, Massie ran a TV ad airing on Fox News in South Florida branding McMurtry a “Trump hater.”

RJC boost: The Republican Jewish Coalition announced on Friday that it is backing McMurtry and will actively fundraise for his campaign, describing Massie as “the only anti-Israel member of the House GOP caucus.” This marks the first time the RJC is supporting a primary challenger to an incumbent. In January, the group’s executive director, Matt Brooks, told Jewish Insider that the RJC will not support Massie — along with three other Republican House members — after they voted against the bipartisan Never Again Education Act, legislation to authorize new funding to help schools teach students about the Holocaust and antisemitism. McMurtry told JI he was “thrilled” and feels “very honored” to get the RJC endorsement, “and we intend to make that endorsement pay off for the RJC by winning this race.”

Massie stands alone on Israel: Massie was the only Republican to vote “no” on a House resolution (H.R. 246) last year condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In 2014, he was the only member of Congress from either party to oppose the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act. Later that year, Massie voted against sending emergency aid to Israel to boost the Iron Dome program during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. In 2016, Massie was again the only House member to oppose extending sanctions against Iran and was the only lawmaker to vote “present” on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. 

McMurtry’s case: The Republican candidate stressed that support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship “actually plays very well here in Kentucky” and is of “primary importance” for voters. “I know that the people here want their elected representatives to be strong supporters of Israel,” McMurtry said. “I share that support both personally and politically.” McMurtry called Massie’s vote against the anti-BDS resolution “pretty crazy” and “odd.” He said he would have voted “in favor of a resolution opposing and condemning the BDS movement,” as well as in favor of a House resolution reaffirming U.S. support for the two-state solution.

Working across the aisle: “I think what would be great if I got elected, especially for Israel, is that I’ve negotiated so many deals among conflicted parties,” McMurtry said, pointing to his mediation experience. “I have handled cases as an attorney where I’ve been an advocate and then a negotiator. So I do believe that I will be a very effective voice for Israel because of those skill sets. And that would include working with the Democrats to find compromise and mutuality on important issues.”

Since he decided to give up his role as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, Adam Schleifer has been mistakenly identified on the street as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who led the impeachment process against President Donald Trump. In an interview with Jewish Insider, Schleifer explained the two share more than a similar name. Schiff and Schleifer both worked in the same major fraud section of the Los Angeles prosecutor’s office. “I will take it anytime because I am very proud of Adam Schiff and the work he has done,” he said. “The more people want to associate me with him, the prouder I will be.”  

Crowded field: Schleifer, 38, is one of 14 Democrats in New York’s 17th congressional district seeking to succeed longtime Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), who announced in October that she would not be seeking re-election. Among the candidates running in the June 23 primary are former Defense Department official Evelyn Farkas, former NARAL chairwoman Allison Fine, New York State Assemblyman David Buchwald, New York State Senator David Carlucci, Westchester County Board of Legislators member Catherine Parker, and Mondaire Jones, an attorney who served in the Justice Department. Schleifer had the most cash-on-hand of all the candidates ($741,386), according to the latest FEC filing. 

Bio: Schleifer clerked for federal judges in New York and California after graduating from Columbia Law School and before joining the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz as an associate focused on commercial litigation. After  joining New York’s Department of Financial Services as a consumer protection and banking regulator in 2013, Schleifer served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles from 2016 until 2019 where he specialized in major fraud, drug cartel and gun crime cases. One of his more notable cases was the investigation of Motti and Sassi Mizrahi, brothers who were charged with wire fraud for scamming members of their San Fernando Valley synagogue. 

Day of reckoning: Schleifer told JI he decided to run for office the day after Yom Kippur, after hearing a sermon about ‘cancel culture’ and the divisions in our public discourse. “That sermon inspired me. I went up to the rabbi afterwards to say it was such an inspiring sermon, but by the time I finished saying that and said that we have to do something about it, he turned to the next person to shake his hand,” Schleifer recounted. “I don’t think he heard me, but I heard [myself]. The next morning I learned that Nita Lowey announced she would not seek re-election. For me it was sort of a ‘bashert’ moment. I felt maybe the universe was speaking to me.” 

Day One Readiness: Schleifer believes his background in law and work in the private sector have taught him a set of skills to be an effective legislator. “Having state and federal experience and not being a lifetime politician, and based on the fact that I have devoted my public service to improving the community’s safety and working with both sides of the aisle, I think [I have] the right mix for the job.” Schleifer added that having a sibling with special needs and growing up in the presence of Holocaust survivors allowed him to understand the need to “[give] everyone a fair opportunity to pursue the American dream.” 

Big shoes: Schleifer said he’s committed to continuing Lowey’s legacy of constituent services and empathy towards the people in her district, noting that her successor will have “tremendous shoes” to fill. He also highlighted Lowey’s bipartisan approach to legislation providing tax relief to homeowners in the district. “And she’s been a strong advocate for the Jewish community and for Israel, and that is central to who I am as a person and it’s very important to my identity and something that I plan to be focused on as a representative,” he added. 

Family ties: Schleifer is the son of Harriet Schleifer, national president of the American Jewish Committee. His father, Leonard, is the billionaire founder and CEO of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company.

Frequent flyer: Schleifer noted that he “probably lived in Israel for a total of three months of my life” over multiple trips to the Jewish state. “I spent 6-8 weeks at an ulpan trying to learn Hebrew,” he said of his early 20s, but added that over the last 12 years he had largely forgotten what he had learned there.  

Fun fact: In 2011, Schleifer was on the U.S. men’s national Maccabi team for fastpitch softball and travelled to Brazil to compete in that year’s Maccabi games, where he won a gold medal. Schleifer is still associated with the Maccabi program and plays from time to time in different tournaments.

U.S.-Israel relationship: Placing blame on both major U.S. political parties, Schleifer decried how the U.S.-Israel alliance “has been politicized in a dangerous way” in recent years. ‘I certainly think [President] Donald Trump has a big piece of that,” he said. “I think his style is concerning and dangerous. He tries to press any strategic and international relationship into a personal partisan, divisive issue at home.” But Schleifer also noted that some within his party have been “demonizing particular politicians who serve in temporary roles as heads of state,” a reference to recent criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Ultimate deal: Schleifer says he wants to see a durable two-state solution in the long term, but that Trump’s “heavy-handed, unilateralist style” is unlikely to get to that. “I am not hopeful that Donald Trump or Jared Kushner are going to deliver anything that resembles a legitimate option of durable peace, in part because of their styles, but also because they haven’t really engaged all the partners in the right way,” he said. 

Checks and balances: Schleifer suggested that the executive branch has too much power over foreign policy decisions that go beyond declaring war and issuing treaties — “We need to get back to giving Congress its due role in the constitutional structure” on foreign policy matters. With regard to conditioning military aid to Israel, Schleifer said it needs to be viewed as a bilateral benefit to both countries, “not as a carrot and stick to move a particular administration in Israel.” 

Combating antisemitism: “Whether there is a far-left extremist in Paris or a far-right neo-Nazi in Germany, the one thing the two can agree on is that they hate Jews. That was troubling enough when it wasn’t on our doorsteps. But in Brooklyn, in Rockland, we see this now in our homes. If you are visibly Jewish in New York in 2020, you are a target. And there is nothing more important to me than using my experience as a prosecutor, my understanding of federal law to protect people from these kinds of hate crimes. I think I have the right skillset and background to actually speak to this exact issue at this exact time in this exact place.” 

Favorite bagel? Schleifer is quick to answer “a pumpernickel or sesame bagel with lox from Mt. Kisco Smokehouse,” owned by two Latino brothers in his Westchester County. Schleifer boasted that the “best lox in the world” comes from his district. “It is so good that my in-laws from New Orleans ask us often to schlep it down with us when we travel down there,” he added. 

Democratic frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would beat President Donald Trump 65-30% among Jewish voters, according to a new poll of 1,001 American Jews conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Associates for the non-partisan Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI). 

Not close: While Trump hits 30% against the remaining candidates, the poll shows he would receive only 28% of the Jewish vote in a hypothetical match-up against Michael Bloomberg, who — like Joe Biden — would receive 67%. 

Not well liked: 52% of American Jews have a favorable view of Sanders, compared to 45% who view him as unfavorable, the survey shows. Sanders enjoys higher support among young Jews, ages 18-39. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is not far off with a 54/40% favorable/unfavorable rating.

Rating Trump: The poll, conducted February 18-24, showed that 68% of American Jews disapprove of Trump’s job performance. Nonetheless on issues related to Israel, more Jews approve of Trump’s handling of the issue than disapprove. Of those polled, 51% approve of his handling of U.S.-Israel relations, compared to 39% who disapprove. Surprisingly, a plurality — 44-40% — back Trump’s decision to support Israel annexing the West Bank, following a mapping process. 

Firing up the base: Among Jewish Republicans, Trump received 81% approval. 

Gold medal: Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg received the highest favorability rating (60%-28%) of all of the Democratic 2020 hopefuls. The survey projects he would receive the highest support among Jewish voters in a general election against Trump (69%-31%). 

Read the full polling data here.

Conclusions: Pollster Frederick Yang said in a statement, “While Jewish voters have differing opinions about the major Democratic candidates, the poll demonstrates that they will overwhelmingly support any of the current Democratic candidates over President Trump at nearly equal levels, and that Israel is not driving the Jewish vote.”

Spin: Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement, “This non-partisan poll makes it clear that the top priority of Jewish American voters is defeating Donald Trump and electing Democrats who share our values. Jews will support any of the Democratic candidates by a two-to-one margin over Donald Trump because Jews want to elect a president who shares our values in November.”

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, tells JI, “These results are consistent with what we’ve been saying since the start of this campaign that President Trump will significantly increase the share of the Jewish vote from where he was in 2016. It was only a few months ago when many pundits in the Jewish community were projecting that Trump would get the lowest share of the Jewish vote of any president in history, and now multiple polls are showing that he’s going to get one of the highest percentages of the Jewish vote in modern elections.”

President Donald Trump received an enthusiastic welcome from several hundred members of the Orthodox Jewish community at a re-election fundraiser held at the InterContinental New York Barclay on Tuesday. 

Video recordings circulating on social media show the president being greeted by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Jacobson, who recited the Hebrew blessing traditionally said upon seeing a king or head of state. 

After being greeted with chants of “four more years,” Trump said he will focus his remarks on Israel because “this is a group, I think, if I didn’t talk about Israel, they’d say, ‘What a rotten speech that was.'”

In his remarks, Trump spoke at length about the Jerusalem embassy move and the pressure he got before making the decision. “I gave you, in Jerusalem, the embassy. That was a big deal,” Trump told attendees.

Trump also mocked Israel’s political system in the wake of the last two election outcomes. “What kind of a system is it over there?” he asked. “They are all fighting and fighting. We have different kinds of fights. At least we know who the boss is. They keep having elections and nobody is elected.” 

The president boasted that he has “an approval rating of 98 percent” in Israel, and quipped that “if anything happens here” with his impeachment, “I will take a trip over to Israel to run for prime minister there.” 

Trump on the flare-up in Gaza: “We’re watching Israel very closely… There are missiles going in and going out. A very bad day… very scary. We are watching it very closely, however. But a lot of bad things are happening today. I mean literally, I wake up and they showed missiles being shot in Israel, and likewise going in the other direction. We have to take care of Israel… We are watching and we are looking out for, really, a great country and with great people. Great people. It’s been misunderstood for a long time. It’s a tiny speck. When you look at these massive empires that it’s surrounded [by]. It’s a tiny speck, and they are almost saying, ‘How can this happen?’ But it happens because they are a great people and they are a very advanced people, and they have a great protector in Donald Trump.” 

Speaking of Hillary Clinton, Trump noted, “75 percent of your people voted for her… She would never do anything for Israel.”

Hasidic singer Beri Weber performed during the luncheon.

This post was updated at 11:45 pm

Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet warned that President Donald Trump has already done lasting damage to global perceptions of the United States, telling Jewish Insider that “every country in the world is going to have to reassess the bargains that it makes with the U.S. as a result of what he’s done in Syria, in Iran and with the Paris climate agreement.”

Speaking to JI after appearing on stage at the annual J Street National Conference in Washington this week, the presidential hopeful expressed his anxiety over the damage he said the president has done to American foreign policy. Bennet said the most common foreign policy question that he’s received from voters is, “How are you going to restore our alliances” after Trump leaves office, a question he says is “an indication to me that people really deeply worried about the instability that [Trump] is creating and the opportunity cost of having somebody with Trump’s view of the world [as President].”

In particular, Bennet praised the Iran deal, from which Trump withdrew in 2018, describing it as “for once an attempt by this country to help manage a problem in the Middle East rather than go to war with it.”

Bennet’s appearance at the annual J Street conference came as the Colorado senator has established himself as perhaps the most vocal critic of the leftward shift of the Democratic Party among the current field of candidates, a stance he thought would pay off. “I just don’t think Iowa Democrats are moving way over to the left,” said Bennet. 

A pointed critic of the Medicare for All healthcare plan being advocated by progressive rivals in the Democratic primary, the Colorado senator thought his critiques of the plan were finally having an impact. Voters “understand that the only person who has come up with how to pay for [Medicare for All] is Bernie [Sanders]. I think that’s also giving them real pause and I’ve been making that argument ever since I got in the race and now finding, I believe, a more welcoming audience.”

Bennet extended his critique of the party’s leftward shift globally, although he noted “there has been less focus [on the campaign trail] on foreign policy.” As an example, he argued that “support for the BDS movement is out of kilter with mainstream voters in both parties.”

Bennet has failed to surpass 1% in national and state polls and did not meet the DNC’s criteria to participate in the two most recent televised debates. “Obviously, I wish I were polling better,” he told JI. However, Bennet noted, “The field remains very unconsolidated. The last poll I saw in Iowa had undecideds up by about 10 or 15 points, so I think it is very fluid.”

Speaking Monday in Washington, Bennet broke from Warren and Sanders on foreign policy when he told J Street conference attendees that he would be hesitant to condition U.S. aid to Israel. He noted to reporters that doing so was “a fairly blunt instrument and could be easily manipulated by someone like Prime Minister Netanyahu for his political interests.” Bennet lamented that Netanyahu had “over and over again engaged with the United States in ways that had enhanced his own domestic political interests” while undermining Washington’s ability “to play a constructive role in a bipartisan way in our support of Israel.” He expressed his concern that the current Israeli government “basically has a permission slip from [the] Trump administration to do whatever they want.” 

The Democrat from Colorado is confident that his party will have the advantage on foreign policy in a general election. “I think Democrats have such a strong case to make because of how reckless Donald Trump has been and how weak he’s been in the prosecution of American foreign policy and the national defense. I’m quite comfortable that Democrats are going to be able to litigate these issues successfully,” said Bennet.

After all, he argued, the current administration does not have a “particularly Republican view of the world. It doesn’t reflect the foreign policy that we’ve pursued as a country for the past 70 years.”

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani seemed to predict his fate and a possible impeachment by the House of Representatives during an event with his indicted associates ― Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections.

In previously unreported remarks at an event hosted by Dr. Joe Frager, vice president of the National Council of Young Israel in Queens, N.Y., on November 1, 2018, Giuliani foresaw the Democrats starting “a hundred investigations” against the president and predicted that “Washington lawyers will make a fortune.”

“The part of their winning is that the House will go crazy. They will start a hundred investigations” — to which Parnas could be heard agreeing, “Oh, you’re right.” Giuliani continued: “They’ll go overboard. They’ll turn the American people off,” he said, stressing the importance of the Republicans holding onto the Senate majority.

“If we have the Senate, they can’t do permanent damage. They can only make trouble, but they can’t pass a law, they can’t impeach anybody,” Giuliani explained. “They have nothing. They can subpoena people like crazy. Then you go to court and fight them… The Washington lawyers will make a fortune. Yeah. I mean, this would be great. I should open an office in Washington (laughter).” 

According to Giuliani, Trump “doesn’t mind the battle. They don’t know what they’re taking on. He’ll destroy them. He’ll absolutely destroy them, and they’ll destroy themselves because the president’s just one person and he’s got one White House that works for him. But they have like probably about a hundred lunatics in the House of Representatives and they’re all going to want the microphone and they’re all going to want to be crazier than the other, and there’s only a certain tolerance the American people have for this.” 

The former mayor of New York City called Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) — who in a 2017 press conference had suggested possible impeachment — “crazy” and “stupid.” 

Also in attendance was Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Moshe Azman, who has been associated with Parnas and Fruman. At the beginning of the event, Parnas introduced Azman as “one of your biggest supporters.” 

During Giuliani’s remarks, Parnas chimed in and implored the crowd: “We need to win the midterms. That’s the bottom line. The president can’t do everything on his own, unfortunately.”

Parnas and Fruman were indicted Thursday on campaign finance charges related to their efforts to remove Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, from her post. They were arrested Wednesday evening at Dulles International Airport as they tried to leave on one-way plane tickets to Vienna. Social media activity over the last two years indicate the duo had socialized with the president and his son, Donald Trump, Jr., and had visited both the White House and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.

WATERLOO, IOWA — Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg accused Donald Trump of taking “U.S. foreign policy steps for the purpose of intervening in Israeli domestic politics” on Monday. Trump has long been a vocal ally and supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and touted a potential defense treaty between the United States and Israel days before the recent election.

Speaking to reporters on his campaign bus, Buttigieg said Trump’s last-minute interjection was a “conflation of domestic and international politics.” The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, compared the president floating a potential Israeli treaty to Trump’s appearance with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Houston on Sunday at a campaign-style rally.

“There’s something deeply unhealthy in many different overlapping ways about [that] kind of conflation of U.S. policy and domestic politics on both sides,” he argued. Buttigieg pointed out that Trump has only contributed to the alliance between the United States and Israel “increasingly coming to be viewed as a partisan issue.”

The Democratic hopeful expressed skepticism that Trump’s remarks last week — appearing to distance himself from Netanyahu — would lead to any change in U.S. policy. “I don’t really find hope in anything this president is doing,” said Buttigieg, “but we’ll see what comes up.” The 2020 hopeful speculated that Trump “wants some level of credibility for whatever peace plan they are going to put out. I’m skeptical but we’ll see what they do or, as the president says ‘we’ll see what happens.’”

Buttigieg also hailed the decision of the Joint List, a coalition of Israeli Arab parties, to back Blue and White leader Benny Gantz as Israel’s next prime minister. “It’s remarkable,” said the South Bend mayor. “I don’t know how that reverberates in terms of the domestic calculations that Gantz has to make, but there is some possibility of growth and unity in that somewhere. I’d like to find out what it actually leads to.”

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claimed during a campus talk this week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “played” President Donald Trump.

In an interview at the Harvard Kennedy School on Tuesday, the former top diplomat argued that Netanyahu — whom he described as an “extraordinarily skilled” politician — would share “misinformation” in meetings to get the Trump administration on board with his policy goals. “They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys,’” Tillerson charged.

Tillerson, who clashed with Trump on decisions including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and withdrawing from the Iran deal, explained that he “exposed” Netanyahu’s tricks to the president “so he understood: ‘You’ve been played.’” 

“It bothers me that an ally that’s that close and important to us would do that to us,” Tillerson added. 

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering easing sanctions on Iran to pave the way for a public meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in New York at the United Nations General Assembly later this month. 

Wendy Sherman, who served as lead negotiator for the Obama administration on the JCPOA, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday that she “would be shocked if Iran agreed to a meeting without some sanctions relief.” According to Sherman, if Trump is serious in offering Tehran some relief, “There are plenty of ways to do this so that everyone’s interests can be met and so that everyone’s face can be saved.”

Bloomberg reported that during an Oval Office meeting on Monday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin expressed his support for such a move, while then-National Security Advisor John Bolton “forcefully” opposed such a step. On Tuesday, Trump fired Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested a meeting with Rouhani is a possibility. The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday that Trump has indicated he is “actively considering” the French plan to grant the Iranian regime a $15 billion credit line if they return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

Sherman told JI that even if the U.S. relaunches direct negotiations with Iran, it “is a very complicated undertaking. I think what’s most important here is that the president go to a meeting with a strategy; a clear objective and a plan.”

Following that, the former diplomat said, “he will need a team that can follow up, a set of consultations that have happened with our partners and allies, and a really full idea of not only what the first step is, but what the next many steps are. The president, as we know, has gone into some of these meetings thinking that he could simply trust his own instincts and his own impulses and that has never gotten a result good for our national security.”

Sherman claimed that “virtually all” of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have said they would return to the 2015 nuclear deal “and I agree with that. Of course, Iran would have to come into full compliance. Likely, we would then, as in all arms control agreements, work for a follow-on agreement.”

Sherman said the conditions of the deal “have changed because of the president’s actions and Iran’s reaction to the president’s actions. The JCPOA remains the essential base but, as a negotiator, you have to take that into account and you have to address where we are.”

Tommy Vietor, Obama’s former National Security Council spokesman, said he believes “Trump should be willing to meet with Rouhani or any other foreign leader. The problem is that Trump is a terrible negotiator. He’s trying to buy a meeting with Rouhani by offering sanctions relief in the hope that it will lead to a negotiation and eventually a deal as strong as the JCPOA. Meanwhile, hard liners in Iran are empowered and our European allies are furious at us for ratcheting up tensions.”

Jason Brodsky, policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told JI that easing sanctions just to meet the Iranian president, “who isn’t its supreme decision-maker, isn’t maximum pressure.” Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Trump appears poised to make “the same mistake President Obama made in 2013 when he relieved the sanctions pressure on Iran to incentivize negotiations that led to the fatally-flawed JCPOA, giving Tehran patient pathways to nuclear weapons. Why President Trump would want to pull an Obama 2.0 is troubling and puzzling.” 

Douglas Feith, a former under secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush, said that Trump “deserves credit for the surprising effectiveness of unilateral U.S. sanctions. If Iran wants sanctions relief, it should be willing to alter its behavior substantially. If it does so, some sanctions relief can reasonably be granted.” But, Feith added, “The U.S. should not have to pay Iran anything to come to the table.”