Chas Freeman : Can Netanyahu Defy Trump?

Trump is caught between two opposing forces. On one side, there is the Israel Lobby which groomed him for decades and got him into the Presidency. On the other side there is an an awakened American nationalism that is becoming aware of the insidious control over US foreign policy that Israel has had since the Liberty attack in 1967, and likely going back to the Kennedy assassination. With Massie’s speech on the floor of Congress yesterday, this is all becoming public. Trump does see that this is happening as his approval ratings plummet. He has claimed that “he calls the shots” but Netanyahu is defiant. Trump’s words no longer have credibility. Only real actions could show that Trump is not a puppet of Israel. What he could and should do is withdraw from the region while blaming Israel for lying us into the Iran war. He could rightly blame Israel for getting us into it. He could then suspend military and financial assistance to Israel, and remove Israel’s diplomatic cover by not exercising a veto against Israel in the UN Security Council. If he did adopt this strategy of blaming everything on Israel, he might even emerge as an American hero after all, the man who finally got the Zionist albatross off of our neck.

Ambassador Freeman concludes by saying:

” I think the real question is, can Donald Trump defy his backers and blackmailers possibly with the Epstein files? You know, he’s under pressure trying to keep whatever those files contain under wraps. The Israelis obviously have all of the information in them from Epstein, who was a Mossad agent, among other distinctions. He’s also under pressure from his Zionist donors, one of whom gave him $250 million, not peanuts. On the other hand of course he’s under pressure from that wing of the MAGA movement that has peeled off to a great extent, exemplified by Tucker Carlson and perhaps JD Vance that he’s under pressure to respect American nationalism and act accordingly. So he’s in a very very bad political position. And the real question is, not that he does the courage to defy Netanyahu – clearly all things being equal he does. The question is given the political realities and the pressure he’s under from so many to whom he’s beholden or whom he fears. Does he have the courage to act? So far there’s no evidence he does. “