Trump posts clip of prof calling Netanyahu ‘obsessive’ about getting US to fight Iran

US president-elect shares without comment a video on Truth Social of Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs calling PM a ‘deep, dark son of a bitch’ and saying he’s gotten US into ‘endless wars’

Republican presidential candidate former US president Donald Trump meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate, July 26, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP/Alex Brandon)
Republican presidential candidate former US president Donald Trump meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate, July 26, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP/Alex Brandon)

US President-elect Donald Trump shared a video on his Truth Social account on Wednesday that included an American professor calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “dark son of a bitch,” accusing him of being “obsessive” in trying to get the US to go to war against Iran.

The video Trump shared was a snippet of a lecture by Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, where he speaks about the pretext for the US invasion of Iraq and how the US government at the time was trying to find a way to sell the “phony war” to the American people.

“Where did that war come from?” Sachs asks rhetorically, as part of an attack on the Obama administration’s actions.

“You know what? It’s quite surprising. That war came from Netanyahu, actually,” he claimed.

“Netanyahu had, from 1995 on, the theory that the only way we are going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That’s Iraq, Syria and Iran,” he added.

“And the guy [Netanyahu] is nothing if not obsessive, and he is still trying to get us to fight Iran to this day,” he claimed. “He is a deep, dark son of a bitch, sorry to tell you.”

“He has gotten us into endless wars, and because of the power of all this in US politics, he has gotten his way,” Sachs concluded.

Jeffrey Sachs (Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äußeres, via Wikipedia)

Trump and Netanyahu have had a complicated relationship over the years. The two leaders worked closely during Trump’s first presidency, but the partnership hit the rocks in 2020 when Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on his election victory, which Trump to this day contests as fraudulent.

In interviews for a book about his Middle East peace efforts, Trump, according to its author, used an expletive to describe the embattled prime minister — “Fuck him,” he reportedly said — and accused Netanyahu of disloyalty.

In recent months, their relationship seems to have shifted in a more positive direction, as Netanyahu visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home in Florida during his visit to the US this past summer.

Netanyahu was also one of the first world leaders to call Trump and congratulate him after his election win in November.

Former US president Donald Trump (left) hosts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Florida, July 26, 2024. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

After Trump’s election victory, Netanyahu said that the two see “eye-to-eye on the Iranian threat in all its components, and the danger posed by it,” but the fact that Trump shared a video that explicitly criticized the Israeli premier for trying to get the US to go to war with Iran brings Netanyahu’s assessment into question.

Trump’s Truth Social post on Wednesday had no caption, was posted without context and the president-elect has not commented on why he shared the video.

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