US Vice President JD Vance on Monday declined to endorse Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu for reelection even though US President Donald Trump had thrown his weight behind him a day earlier.
However, Vance had campaigned for then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban last spring before his party lost the parliamentary election. Vance has openly criticised specific members of the Israeli government, particularly regarding their public opposition to the Trump administration’s diplomatic negotiations and preliminary agreements with Iran.
During an interview with journalist Mark Halperin, Vance said, “The president has the most influential endorsement in American or international political history. “The problem for Israel is not Donald J Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in,” Vance said.
And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements”, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
Vance pressed Netanyahu on his confidence regarding the likelihood of regime change, according to the outlet. One US official told Axios that “Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was.
