Donald Trump just did something American presidents almost never do. Nine days before Israelis go to the polls, he put himself on their ballot.
In a lengthy post addressed “To the Great People of Israel” on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for Israel’s October 27 election — calling him “a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combating the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
It was a sharp reversal. Just three days earlier, in a Newsmax interview, Trump had refused to endorse any candidate in the Israeli race — Netanyahu included.
The post leaned entirely on the war with Iran, now grinding into its ninth month. Trump quoted Tehran’s decades-old slogans — “Death to Israel, Death to America” — and its threats to destroy what he called “the Little Satan and the Big Satan,” and claimed Iran had been “systematically destroyed, both Militarily and Financially.”
“Bibi Netanyahu has been Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself,” Trump wrote. “I have watched Bibi under the most trying of times. Normal men or women in such situations would have wilted under the pressure — But Bibi did not wilt, he actually got stronger.”
Then came the message aimed squarely at Israeli voters. “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi,” he wrote, “America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.” The post ended the way Trump’s posts do — in all caps: “BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Netanyahu answered within hours. In a video statement, the prime minister told Israelis the election was about “ensuring Israel’s survival” — and that only he and Trump could finish destroying Iran’s nuclear program. Trump, he said, had promised to “complete that mission together with yours truly,” and their partnership would continue “in order to eliminate the Iranian threat over the next two years, and perhaps even sooner.” The boast follows Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s declaration that Iran’s nuclear program was already destroyed — a claim the continuing war keeps testing.
The endorsement arrives with Netanyahu’s Likud trailing in the polls behind the Yashar party of former army chief Gadi Eisenkot. Eisenkot, whose family came from Morocco, would be Israel’s first prime minister of Mizrahi — Middle Eastern Jewish — background. It is Israel’s first election since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, and both camps have put that day at the center of the campaign: opponents want Netanyahu to pay for the failures that led to the deadliest day in Israel’s history, while his supporters say he was betrayed by the military establishment and has since led a dramatic rebound.
The post also complicates a diplomatic flap from earlier this week. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a Trump loyalist, held a private meeting with Eisenkot — Netanyahu’s chief rival — amid reports that the White House was nudging toward a unity government pairing the two. Huckabee dismissed the reports as “fake news” and insisted Washington was “not trying to manipulate Israel’s election.” An endorsement posted to the entire Israeli electorate makes that position harder to hold.
And it is the second time in three days Netanyahu has split openly with parts of his own government. On Saturday he publicly cast doubt on his own military’s account of a settler attack on European diplomats in the West Bank, calling the accusations against Jewish residents a “coordinated smear campaign” — directly contradicting the army’s condemnation.
The campaign turned openly ugly over the weekend as well. Yinon Magal, a commentator on the pro-government Channel 14, repeatedly called Eisenkot a “monkey” on air and said he was being “managed” by Ashkenazi Jews. Opposition figures called it racist; Netanyahu condemned the remark while complaining his own Likud party faced worse. Eisenkot’s Yashar answered with billboards accusing Netanyahu’s camp of disparaging Mizrahi voters.
Why this matters beyond Israel: a sitting US president has now made a foreign election a referendum on who gets to fight the Iran war alongside America — and hinted the United States might have to step in directly if voters choose wrong. With oil above $110 on war fears and the US midterms two weeks out, Trump’s bet cuts both ways: he has tied his own political fortunes to Netanyahu’s survival, and Netanyahu has tied his campaign to the promise that only he can keep Trump at his side. If the polls are right and Eisenkot wins, both bets collapse at once.
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