When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump met in the Oval Office on July 28, Trump asked Netanyahu how he was doing in the polls ahead of the October 27 Knesset election, according to a Friday Axios report.
Netanyahu paused, the report noted. Then one of his advisers piped up: "Mr. President, he is winning," the aide said, according to Axios, citing a US official familiar with the exchange.
At the time of the meeting, the coalition bloc had 49 predicted Knesset seats, according to a Maariv poll - 12 short of the 61 seats needed for a majority. A more recent poll conducted on Friday predicted 48 seats.
Ahead of the meeting, Netanyahu hoped to secure Trump’s support for his reelection campaign ahead of the October 27 election, people familiar with the matter said.
For months before the meeting, Trump publicly stated that he had urged Netanyahu not to launch further strikes in Lebanon and that he wanted to see Israel withdraw from parts of Syria. On several occasions, he had suggested that Washington and Jerusalem do not necessarily see eye-to-eye on every regional issue.
The US president recently said that "Bibi is his own worst enemy," according to Axios, citing two people who spoke with Trump about Netanyahu.
Netanyahu uses Likud’s first reserved slot for businessman who called Trump ‘piece of s***'
Likud announced on Monday that entrepreneur and businessman Oren Dobronsky, a co-founder of the tech company Hotbar who spent years working in Silicon Valley, would receive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first reserved slot on the party’s Knesset list ahead of the elections.
Shortly after the announcement of his reserved slot, it emerged that Dobronsky had previously attacked US President Donald Trump, calling him “a morally corrupt person” in a post on X/Twitter.
Dobronsky walks back statement following backlash over Trump comments
However, on Monday, Dobronsky walked back his statement. He wrote on Facebook that “President Trump is the greatest friend that Israel ever had in the Whitehouse [sic]. I posted in his favor countless times. On one occasion, not knowing all the facts, I lost my temper and posted something I regret. My apologies to President Trump, whom I admire deerly [sic].”
Dobronsky is well-known in the Israeli and American tech industries. He co-founded a company that developed a toolbar for Internet browsers and later completed a significant exit. He subsequently continued working as an entrepreneur and invested in start-ups.
Idan Kweller, Moshe Cohen, Keshet Neev, and James Genn contributed to this report.