Trump Says Israel’s $4 Billion Ends This Year. Netanyahu Asked, and El-Sayed Loses a Talking Point

President Trump used his Election Day morning call to “Fox & Friends” to end one of the left’s favorite talking points. The roughly $4 billion a year that America sends Israel, he said, stops when 2026 does.

“We were giving them $4 billion. We are, but it gets cut off at the end of the year,” Trump told co-host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday, as polls opened across the country.

Kilmeade asked why. “Because they don’t need it, Brian,” Trump said. “Israel is a very thriving country. They don’t need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.”

Netanyahu asked first

Trump said the idea didn’t start in Washington. “Bibi Netanyahu, we reached an agreement on that. And can I be honest with you? He brought it up. He brought it up,” Trump said. “He said, ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid.’”

In a part of the call quoted by Reuters, Trump said the two leaders “made a deal months ago that we’re stopping.” “We’ve already agreed that by the end of this year we won’t be paying Israel,” he said. “Now we’ll help Israel if they need it.”

That lines up with what Netanyahu has been saying all year. In January he told The Economist, as Reuters reported, “I want to taper off military aid within the next 10 years,” meaning down to zero. By June he wanted it faster. “I want it to start now, I want it to start in the last two years of the Trump administration and I want it to keep going down, coming to zero, because I think we’ve come of age,” he told CNBC, as Jewish Insider reported.

Asked whether the $4 billion meant military aid, Trump said to count it any way you like. “You can consider it barter. You can consider military aid or cash,” he said.

The money on paper

The aid Trump is talking about comes from a 10-year memorandum of understanding signed in September 2016, in Barack Obama’s last months in office. It pledges Israel $38 billion over fiscal years 2019 through 2028: $3.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million a year for missile defense. Israel spends most of that money on American-made weapons.

Ending it early would leave about two years of that pledge unpaid, roughly $7.6 billion. Trump didn’t say how that would be done. No written agreement had been released by Tuesday morning, Congress still writes the checks through its yearly spending bills, and the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment to The Jerusalem Post.

A talking point gone

Trump made clear who he had in mind. “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” he said. “It’s a bad talking point.”

That is Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, who faces Republican Mike Rogers on Tuesday. El-Sayed has made Israel a centerpiece of his campaign. An ad backing him blamed Israel for $7 eggs, and on 60 Minutes he put a condition on Israel’s right to exist. The line he and his allies keep using is simple: America pays for Israel while Americans pay more at the store.

Trump’s answer takes that line away. If Israel isn’t getting the money, there is nothing to run against. And it is Israel’s own prime minister, not its critics, who asked to give it up.

Where Israel stands

The news lands a week after Israel’s own election, which Trump openly tried to sway for Netanyahu. His bloc won 53 seats, short of the 61 needed to govern, according to AP. Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc won 48 and Arab-led parties a record 19. Netanyahu remains prime minister while the parties bargain, and President Isaac Herzog starts consultations Wednesday.

Whoever forms the next government will inherit a U.S. relationship that, by Trump’s telling, runs on purchases instead of grants. “Israel is our number one,” Trump said. “We give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it.”