On Election Day morning, President Donald Trump said he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed months ago to stop roughly $4 billion a year in U.S. aid to Israel by the end of 2026.
What Trump said
Trump made the comments in a phone interview with Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” as Americans voted in the midterm elections, according to NBC News and the BBC.
He said the United States gives Israel about $4 billion a year and that a deal reached months ago would end that support at year’s end. “Now we’ll help Israel if they need it,” he said, according to the BBC. Trump added that Israel has “become a very successful country” and “they don’t need it,” NBC reported.
Trump said the idea came from Netanyahu. “He brought it up,” Trump said, according to NBC. He also argued that critics on the left use the aid figure “as a signal of unfairness,” and he named Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in that context, NBC reported.
What remains unclear
- A long-running U.S.–Israel memorandum of understanding provides about $3.8 billion a year in military aid and is set to run through 2028, NBC and the BBC noted.
- It was not immediately clear which exact funding stream Trump meant, both outlets reported.
- A Netanyahu spokesman told NBC he did not know about Trump’s remarks and would check for details. The BBC said the Israeli prime minister’s office had yet to comment.
Other reactions
Netanyahu said in a May interview with CBS that he wanted to “draw down” U.S. financial support “to zero” over about a decade, the BBC reported.
In Israel, Yair Golan, leader of the left-wing Democrats party, called a cutoff a “severe blow” to Israel’s security and blamed Netanyahu, according to NBC. Oil prices fell after Trump’s comments, NBC said.
Aid to Israel and the war in Gaza have been among the most contested midterm issues. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack and the war that followed, the United States has sent about $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel, according to research cited by NBC from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Trump said Israel could still buy U.S. weapons and get help if needed. Formal details of any new arrangement were not released Tuesday morning.
