Evangelical Trump ally says Israel has until January 20 to wrap up wars

A top evangelical ally of Donald Trump and longtime confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Israel must end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon by the time the Republican returns to office.

“The window is open,” says Mike Evans, speaking to The Times of Israel from his Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem. “It’ll close on the 20th of January. Donald Trump does not want this to be happening in the first year of his presidency.”

“You don’t want to put Donald Trump into a position to have to defend a Middle East war,” he continues. “He’s repulsed by Middle East wars.”

Trump, he says, doesn’t want to be the wartime president. “Israel needs to know that and do everything humanly possible while the window’s open.”

Evans says he doesn’t think the isolationist wing of the Republican Party — which includes figures like Tucker Carlson and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance — will take over Trump’s foreign policy in his second term: “Tucker Carlson is a talk show host. I don’t think that Donald Trump embraces Tucker Carlson’s ideology on isolationism at all.”

Evans was among the key Christian leaders who consolidated Evangelical support for Trump in 2016. He says that Trump must continue backing Israel if he wants to hold onto support from the large Evangelical constituency, noting that they no longer need him to reverse access to abortion.

“There is no Roe v. Wade now,” he says. “The major thing for Evangelicals now is Israel.”

He says the massive billboards he has paid for across central Israel calling on Trump to “Make Israel Great Again” are a reminder to the president-elect.

“I’m talking to Donald Trump right now through the billboards, and he knows those billboards are up,” he claims.