Trump flip-flops, pledges to move US Embassy to Jerusalem

Donald Trump says he would move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“They want it in Jerusalem,” the front-runner among Republican presidential candidates says in an interview posted Tuesday by The Brody File, a Christian Broadcasting Network show. “Well I am for that 100 percent. We are for that 100 percent.”

David Brody, the CBN journalist, had asked Trump whether he agreed with GOP rivals, including Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who have pledged to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem once elected.

Trump’s agreement seems to be an about-face from remarks in December at the Republican Jewish Coalition, when the real estate magnate refused to commit to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital.

Speaking over boos at that event, Trump said it was foolish to harden positions ahead of talks.

“You can’t go in with the attitude ‘we’re gonna shove it down your,’ you’ve got to go in and get it and do and do it it nicely, so that everybody’s happy,” he said there.

Congress passed a law in 1995 mandating the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, but allowed the president a waiver. Each president since then has routinely exercised the waiver, citing the national security interests of the United States.

— JTA, Times of Israel staff