Trump, The Most Israeli Friendly President Ever

So, it's both timings on the part of Netanyahu and its timing on the part of Trump. I mean it's dangerous in a sense, but Pompeo was part of this alleged visit to Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu, Pompeo met the Mad Prince in some coastal city or other.

Now, Netanyahu would already meet with the UAE and clandestinely, Israel has worked for many years, decades with the Arab monarchs, Persian Gulf States. So none of this is new. Part of this is symbolic, but the worrisome part of it is that there were reports that Trump had wanted to have an actual war with Iran before he left office.

And, you know, his advisor said: “No, Donald, you can't do that.” That's not a wise decision. But Pompeo is quite mad. I can't believe I'm saying it to people. I mean he's really a xenophobe, a religious zealot, an extremist Dominionist Christian.

You know he expects the Rapture any day now and he's a former head of the CIA. So anything is possible with Pompeo. And he's also trying to make a name for himself before Trump leaves office, and because apparently, they're reports that Pompeo wants to run on the Republican ticket for the next presidential election, which he has absolutely no possibility of doing, but, you know, that's beside the point.

So, Netanyahu is doing this at this moment just because he's doing anything he can to kind of muddy the climate and delay things, an odd of sort of chess moves made with a boss and the Palestinian, a partisan Israel and the negotiations with them. It's something he wouldn't have done a few years ago, but he's parted ways with Lieberman, and so they're in conflict, he's supposed to turn over his prime ministership as it were to Benny Gantz but nobody believes that's going to happen, certainly Benny Gantz doesn't believe that. But you know there is a very real possibility Netanyahu goes to jail. This is not impossible. The corruption charges are numerous and well-documented against him and his wife.

So, I think the motivations are probably slightly different, but you have to look at this and think that from the Saudi perspective, they can't carte blanche it with Trump. … New York Times did, you know, a huge op-ed Thomas Friedman, a puff piece on Prince Mohammad.

And, Biden probably won't do that and there's a lot of worries that the Saudis will be kind of one of the victims of perception management from the new Biden team that they're going to want to make an impression because, you know, he's already appointed Nick Burns, and Tony Blinken is the nominee anyway for Secretary of State.

And these guys are hawks, liberal interventionists but extreme hawks, cheerleaders for war. They're tied with the Defense Department with the Pentagon. So Biden as I suggested before is going to be a really militaristic president.

Now the other factor in all of this, you know, besides the Saudis kind of worrying and hedging their bets a little and wanting to make sure that they have secure relationships in the region, beyond that we're facing a global depression.

I mean, it's sort of like the demolition of capitalism in a sense with all these countries under lockdown and we're seeing in the United States, you know, 40 million jobs as a conservative estimate lost.

You know museums, cinemas, theaters closed, everything's closed; we're seeing this throughout Europe. You know, a country like Indonesia I was just reading today is under extreme lockdown. And yet, a country of 276 million people has only had 16,000 deaths from COVID.

You have to wonder if all of these lockdowns have not become political rather than medical, because it's a very strange thing and it's global, and there's a lot of questions there but one of the key things that we do know is that the United States is in a huge economic depression, massive acute, deep, no doubt long-lasting.

So that factor how that exactly affects these kinds of negotiations I'm not sure. And we won't know fully until Biden takes office but. But I think that this is a worry for all of these parties, and it just sort of casts a long shadow over all of it but if I had to make it short which I'm not doing.

I would say the implications are both significant but also nothing new. I mean it's significant that the US is going to continue to sell weapons to the Saudis to UAE, all of these places we know they're going to ratchet up attempts at, you know, coup d'etat spree fighting in the region, they want to destabilize the region, they will eventually target Iran in some fashion or other but it will be cosmetically different from what Trump did.

From Israel's perspective, they're just trying to get a head start on what whatever degree of less pandering Biden brings to the table to them than Trump did. Trump was the most Israeli friendly president ever. Biden will of course be very friendly but, but not quite like Trump and I think they're just protecting themselves, ahead of time, against that.