EXCLUSIVE: Trump Acknowledges Israel Is Losing Control Of Congress

THE OVAL OFFICE – President Donald Trump told the Daily Caller that the Israel lobby is losing influence over Congress during an interview Friday.

Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese sat down with Trump for an hour in the Oval Office Friday afternoon. A March Pew Research Center Poll that found support for Israel among young Republicans is slipping. The president acknowledged that he was aware of this trend, and explained to the Caller that Israel’s ironclad support in Congress is a thing of the past. (RELATED: Trump Makes NATO Call Him ‘Daddy’)

The following is an unedited excerpt from the Caller’s conversation with the president. A full transcript will be made available Monday evening.

REESE: A different war, Israel, a March Pew Poll, found that 53% of surveyed U.S. adults had an unfavorable view of Israel, that’s down – or that is up from 42% in 2022. Among young Republicans under 50, 50% have an unfavorable view of Israel. That’s up from 35% in 2022. There’s a growing group within the MAGA, America First coalition, Republicans, especially younger Republicans, who are skeptical of our support for Israel. Are you aware of this group? Are you worried about it?

TRUMP: Yeah I’m aware of it. So, Israel is amazing, because, you know, I have good support from Israel. I have. Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out. We, that plane, wiped them out like nobody ever saw before. You know, we got back and CNN was trying to say ‘well, maybe it wasn’t complete,’ and it turned out totally complete, beyond complete. But when, if you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing. 

There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly. But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they’ve really, they’ve changed it. You’re too young to know this, but if you go back 15 years, probably that’s when it started, right. Israel, you would understand this very much, Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that. And people, they forgot about October 7th. You know, October 7th was a truly horrible day, because I’ve seen the pictures.

REESE: I was just over in Israel, and we went right up to the war where you could hear the bombs dropping in Gaza. And we went to the places from October 7th. Scary. Being in it. I understand —

TRUMP: It was a really bad one, right? 

REESE: Yeah. 

TRUMP: And you know, you have people that deny it ever happened, they’re deniers. You have people that deny the Holocaust ever happened. So, they’re gonna have to get that war over with. But it is hurting Israel. There’s no question about it. They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them. But Israel was the strongest lobby 15 years ago that there has ever been, and now it’s, it’s been hurt, especially in Congress. 

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Trump-ally, recently became the first House Republican to say Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza. Steven Bannon, another longtime Trump booster, has spent the summer claiming that Israel is not truly an ally of the United States and has called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp untrustworthy.