‘Mr. President, he is winning’: Netanyahu aide tried assuring Trump PM polling well amid lackluster numbers

During their July 28 meeting in the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump reportedly asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how he was doing in the polls ahead of the October 27 Knesset election in Israel.

Netanyahu hesitated in responding, leading one of his advisers to pipe in and say, “Mr. President, he is winning,” according to the Axios news site.

Virtually no poll shows Netanyahu with the ability to form a coalition, and recent surveys have his Likud party trailing Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar.

Delving into why Trump hasn’t endorsed Netanyahu ahead of the upcoming election, Axios, citing two senior officials, says the US president likes the Israeli prime minister personally but has been frustrated with some of his policies and decisions as of late, particularly pertaining to Iran, Lebanon and Gaza.

“Bibi is his own worst enemy,” Trump has said about Netanyahu, according to two people who have spoken to the president recently.

A former US official told Axios that Netanyahu’s poor performance in the polls is also what has led Trump to refrain from endorsing him to date.

Despite Trump’s apparent hesitation in endorsing Netanyahu, the premier’s rivals Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid have still expressed concern that the president will endorse the premier anyway, according to two of the opposition leaders’ aides who spoke to Axios.

Accordingly, the opposition figures have funneled back-channel messages to Trump’s circle urging him to remain neutral in the upcoming Israeli election, the aides said.