The News
President Donald Trump raised eyebrows this week when he broke with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare apparent “real starvation” among children in Gaza.
That may well be as far as the divide goes between the two men.
While Trump’s frustration with the devastation in Gaza is real, those closest to him argue against viewing Monday’s remarks as a turning point in his approach to Israel. Allies and Trump aides also reject the notion that Trump is airing any new skepticism of Israel.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close Trump adviser on national security, said the president is still “very firmly in Israel’s camp.”
“Opening the humanitarian corridors is good. I’m sure there’s all kinds of health problems in Gaza. Israel’s in a fight for its life,” Graham told Semafor. “Try to help as many people and guys as you can without rewarding the enemy, and I’m hoping we’re turning that page in terms of the aid flowing.”
Sitting next to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, Trump promised to help “set up food centers” in Gaza, adding that he disagreed with Netanyahu’s claim that there’s “no starvation.” Children in Gaza “look very hungry” based on images he’d recently seen on television, the president said, adding that it’s something “you can’t fake.”
The small but loud wing of Trump’s party that has bristled at the close US-Israel relationship rejoiced: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that “it’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say” that multiple aspects of the war are “horrific,” describing the situation in Gaza as a “genocide.” Longtime Trump ally and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Politico that Trump’s remarks would “hasten a collapse of support” for Netanyahu’s war in Gaza.
But many other Republicans were less convinced that Trump’s remarks meant much. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., argued that Trump is simply “frustrated with a humanitarian situation” — not moving away from Netanyahu.
“I think we all are [frustrated]. I think Israel is, but it’s going to be addressed,” Kennedy told Semafor of the situation in Gaza. “The president has been very supportive of Israel, much more so than President Biden.”
“The president’s position has not evolved. The war has evolved,” one White House official told Semafor. “He hated seeing Israelis raped, killed and taken hostage on October 7, just as much as he hates seeing Palestinian women and children starving and begging for food. At the end of the day, he wants to be a peacemaker, and he wants to end suffering for all people.”
In fact, the president said on Tuesday that he’s “working together” with Netanyahu.
Know More
Inside the administration, no one seems to be taking Trump’s recent remarks on Gaza as a meaningful diversion from his previous approach. The president simply isn’t “a cookie-cutter conservative” and therefore isn’t “a cookie cutter supporter of Israel,” one person close to him said.
“He’s going to stand with Israel,” a second administration official told Semafor, adding that Trump simply doesn’t “want to see kids starving” or have to answer for every decision Israel makes in its war against Hamas. This is not Trump “stepping back from Netanyahu,” the official added.
The speculation after Trump’s Monday comments about starvation in Gaza stems from the difficulty of defining his policy decisions, which don’t always fit neatly into an ideological box. One simple factor that may be influencing his reaction this week is his hatred for war and bloodshed, as often described by those close to him.
And the Gaza-Israeli conflict has gone on long enough to weigh on the president and elected officials in both parties.
“The intention is to punish the terrorists and stop the terrorists, but the longer it goes on, and the longer children and populations are starving, the more you generate more terrorists. It’s an endless cycle,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a fixture in the party’s non-interventionist wing. “It’s hard not to be sad, concerned, overwhelmed by the pictures from Gaza.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a more hawkish member who talks to Trump often, said simply that no two allies agree 100% of the time.
“If you look at his background, he hates war, he hates suffering. So I think it’s consistent,” Scott said. Trump and Netanyahu “have a good relationship, in my experience,” he added.
Gaza isn’t even the first time Trump has aired views that might, at first glance, appear at odds with other decisions he’s made. Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, for example, Trump has held a wide variety of stances over the course of several months.
Trump has gone from kicking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House in February to ramping up his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin and sending more weapons to Ukraine this month.
Shelby and Burgess’ View
The overarching theme of Trump’s most recent foreign policy moves is an effort to define himself as a peacemaker through strength in his second term (although he’d never mention that Ronald Reagan used the same brand).
He bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities without stoking a broader conflict, for example.
Trump’s Israel comments demonstrated he’s a more transactional operator than an adherent of any fixed doctrine on foreign policy. Perhaps most interestingly, his remarks prompted other Republicans — some of whom previously avoided the topic — to agree that children in Gaza are suffering and need help.
It’s another example of the party shifting toward whatever Trump focuses on — and, in some cases, being given permission to exercise some daylight with Israel.
“There are elements of the Republican Party that aren’t comfortable supporting Israel,” the person close to Trump noted. “In a lot of ways, [Trump’s] unpredictability is unifying, because there are people who are like, ‘I’ve kind of always thought that, but I’m kind of too nervous to say it on the House floor.’”
Room for Disagreement
Democrats are rapidly mobilizing in reaction to the crisis in Gaza, seeking to take advantage of the appearance of daylight between Trump and Netanyahu.
Forty-four of the 47 Democratic caucus members wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff on Tuesday urging them “to advocate for a large-scale expansion of humanitarian assistance and services throughout the Gaza Strip.”
Notable
- Sen. Tom Cotton is arguing that Israel doesn’t have a “responsibility to provide any kind of aid into Gaza,” and that the country is often “held to a different standard than the rest of the world.”
- Trump is testing his foreign policy instincts, even as the party still works to define what exactly the president’s ideology is, Semafor recently reported.