Staunch evangelical allies of Israel upset by Trump's outburst on Netanyahu

Source: Washington Post

Staunch evangelical allies of Israel upset by Trump’s outburst on Netanyahu

By Steve Hendrix and Miriam Berger
December 14, 2021 at 1:41 p.m. EST

JERUSALEM — One of former president Donald Trump’s major evangelical backers Monday condemned recently reported attacks by Trump on former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and warned that he risked alienating his Christian base by distancing himself from the Israeli leader.

Trump, in interviews published this week by Axios reporter Barak Ravid, railed against his onetime ally for congratulating President Biden on his victory once it became clear that the Democrat had won the 2020 election. Trump said the call was a betrayal of their relationship and the several controversial changes in U.S. policy toward Israel that Trump had ordered during his term, including moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

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Evangelical leaders in the United States — many of whom are ardent supporters of both Trump and Israel — have been largely silent on the former president’s reported comments. But Mike Evans, one of Trump’s early evangelical backers, said he was “horrified” by the sentiments and said they would offend significant numbers of evangelical voters.

Evans, a Texas-based evangelical and former adviser to Trump, in a letter to the former president that he shared with a Washington Post reporter, implored him to “understand that Benjamin Netanyahu,” in Evans’s view, “has much greater support among evangelicals in America than you.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/evangelicals-shocked-trump-netanyahu-rift/2021/12/14/dbee0bc2-5cb3-11ec-b1ef-cb78be717f0e_story.html

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Related: Trump blasts Netanyahu for disloyalty: "F**k him" (Axios)