Rowdy Jerusalem crowd of Trump backers grows

Republican representatives in Israel who started the night with pessimism are now looking at the next four years with a totally different attitude as an election watch party in Jerusalem continues.

At the beginning of the night, a subdued Marc Zell, the director of Republicans Overseas Israel, had warned the crowd that it could be a “short night,” implying an early defeat of Trump.

But now, with Zell already off to Tel Aviv for a round of TV interviews, the crowd has started growing again as people wake up to begin their day. Teenagers are coming into the bar with their parents, and many new faces are starting off with chants of “Lock Her Up!” rather than a cup of coffee.

“I’m feeling a lot better than the people in Times Square, my friend just told me it was silent there,” says Republicans Overseas Israel spokesman Abe Katsman. “I’m not shocked by this, if the polls were undercounted by even a percent or two, they were so close in each state, that you really didn’t know. My personal feeling is I’m not a full-throated Trump cheerleader. I’m glad he won, I really feel that America dodged a bullet by not having a Clinton presidency. I am pleased, but not euphoric.”

Katsman adds that as this is his third presidential campaign in Israel, it feels good to be on the winning side.

“When your hope is that the polls are off, if that’s what you have to hold on to, well, you’d like to have more than that in your corner going into election night,” he says. “It says a lot about how terrible a candidate she is. She is so flawed and so disliked by so many people, that even with all the media behind her and all the right people behind her, she still couldn’t beat Donald Trump, a man with no government experience, as controversial a figure as they come, who put his foot in his mouth at so many points. At the end of the day, I take great encouragement in the people he has surrounded himself with, from both the American and Israeli perspective.”

As newscasters, even on Fox News, express concern about what Trump might do to America, people in the crowd yell expletives at the screen and shake their fists.

— Melanie Lidman