Plenty of politicians are running away from Benjamin Netanyahu. President Trump just ran straight toward him.
On Sunday, nine days before Israel votes, Trump gave the Israeli prime minister his “Complete and Total Endorsement.” In a letter to the Israeli people on Truth Social, he called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” who has been “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition,” the Daily Wire reported. He ended in all capital letters: “BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
That took nerve. Standing with Netanyahu right now wins Trump little in the polls and nothing with the Democrats who want Netanyahu arrested.
Swimming against the tide
The numbers are brutal. A Pew Research Center survey in March found 60% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, up from 42% in 2022. Among Democrats, it’s 80%. Fifty-nine percent of Americans say they have little or no confidence in Netanyahu.
It gets worse on the left. In an Economist/YouGov poll in July, 68% of Democrats said the United States should arrest Netanyahu if he sets foot here, under the International Criminal Court warrant issued against him in November 2024. Think about that: two-thirds of one major party want to handcuff the elected leader of America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Trump looked at all of that and doubled down.
Why he did it: Iran
Trump tied the endorsement directly to the war with Iran. If Israel picked “the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi,” he wrote, America would have to finish the job against Iran alone, and he is not inclined to do that, Fox News reported. He said Netanyahu “did not wilt” under a multi-front war and “actually got stronger.”
Netanyahu answered on X: “Israel has never had a greater friend in the White House.” Israel votes Oct. 27. Forecasts cited by Fox News put his bloc at about 49 to 51 of the 61 seats needed to govern, so Trump’s words could matter.
The hatred behind the headlines
The turn against Israel isn’t happening in a vacuum. Jews are being targeted, and some are being killed.
The Anti-Defamation League counted 203 antisemitic assaults in the United States in 2025, the most since it began tracking in 1979. Assaults involving deadly weapons jumped 39%. Three people were murdered, including two Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, and 82-year-old Karen Diamond, who died after a firebombing at a Boulder, Colorado, rally for Israeli hostages.
“Numbers that would have shocked us five years ago are now our floor,” ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt said. In April, a man in London stabbed two Jewish men in Golders Green. Police said he set out to attack people who looked “visibly Jewish.”
The bottom line
It is easy to stand with Israel when it’s popular. Trump is standing with Israel when the polls and the Democratic Party have turned against it, and when Jews on both sides of the Atlantic are being attacked in the streets.
That’s what leadership looks like. Trump isn’t checking which way the wind blows. He’s backing the ally that has carried the fight against Iran, and he’s telling the world exactly where America stands.
Plenty of politicians will give a speech against antisemitism. Trump just put his name on the line for the Jewish state.