Jonathan V. Last

American foreign policy under Trump

starts with the president's political interests and then conforms the national interests to those.

Correct.

Correct.

Sorry.

Sorry.

And so a government which is nice to Trump, like Bukele in El Salvador, gets American foreign policy on its side, regardless of whether or not it's in America's interests.

Right.

It's like the opposite of America first.

It's not, it's just Trump first.

So Trump has done something similar with Israel, or rather Israel has done something similar with Trump.

Israeli foreign policy for the last eight years now has really operated differently

in a way in which they took for granted that a Democratic president would honor the American-Israel alliance because it works in America's national interests, but that they would have to politically be useful to Trump in order to secure Trump's help.

And what that did was, especially in...

After the October 7 attacks, when Joe Biden was trying very hard to hug Bibi Netanyahu and help Israel however he could, at the end of the day, they thought they would do better under Trump and that Trump would be more useful to them.

And so they undercut Biden.

And the government of Israel played favorites.

It was in favor of the Republican Party.

And I don't want to say it meddled in the election.

And I'm not saying they meddled in the election, but that Israeli policy was geared towards, we would like to make things difficult for Biden and put the Democrats in a difficult position because we would rather the Republicans win the presidential election.