Benjamin Netanyahu tried to will a meeting into existence with President Trump last week, and it backfired spectacularly. The Israeli prime minister's office announced plans to visit Washington on Monday for what would have been his seventh Oval Office meeting in eighteen months. White House officials were blindsided to learn about the visit through Israeli news outlets. The problem: no meeting had ever been scheduled.
Netanyahu had been seeking a formal appointment for more than two weeks without success. Trump had mentioned in early July that the Israeli leader could visit after returning from NATO meetings in Turkey on July 8, but days passed with no follow-up. Then came news of former Senator Lindsey Graham's death. Netanyahu's team pivoted, saying the prime minister wanted to attend the funeral and would stop by the White House on Monday for talks with Trump.
Preparations accelerated. Netanyahu's office notified the Israeli Air Force to ready his government plane. Security and protocol teams were dispatched to Washington. The machinery of a state visit was set in motion.
Then on Thursday morning, it all evaporated. Netanyahu's office cancelled the trip, citing the postponement of Graham's funeral service. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged. Two White House officials told Axios that Netanyahu's team had never secured actual approval. "Our impression was that Bibi was trying to will a meeting into existence," one official said. Netanyahu apparently never received an outright rejection, but he received no confirmation either.
The rejection, however soft, marked a dramatic shift in Trump's posture toward his closest ally in the Middle East. Netanyahu has visited the Oval Office more frequently than any other world leader since Trump returned to office. Previously, such meetings were arranged within hours or days. This time, the prime minister couldn't get on the calendar.
Tensions between the two had been building. Just before Trump departed for Turkey, Netanyahu appeared on Fox News and criticized the president's plan to sell F-35 fighter jets to the country. Trump was furious. One White House official said the president was "pissed off" by the interview. Another reported that Trump believed Netanyahu "had no right" to weigh in on arms sales policy.
The diplomatic chill came as Israel provided American intelligence about Iranian threats against Trump during his time in Ankara. Israeli and U.S. officials said a senior Iranian official had allegedly suggested that Iran attempt to kill the president. The Secret Service took precautions, switching Trump to an older Air Force One. Yet multiple U.S. officials dismissed the threat as "more aspirational than operational" and noted it was single-sourced and uncorroborated. Turkish security services investigated and found no credible assassination plot.
Netanyahu's standing in Washington has crumbled far beyond Trump's inner circle. On Wednesday, 103 House Democrats voted to cut $3 billion in military aid to Israel, a stunning rebuke that one Jewish Democratic leader characterized as more about Netanyahu and his government than the aid itself. Vice President JD Vance has publicly accused Netanyahu of making unfounded predictions about the Iran conflict and suggested that members of his government are trying to undermine Trump administration policy to prolong the war. Vance made those comments on Joe Rogan's podcast, ensuring maximum visibility.
Netanyahu is now deeply unpopular among Democrats and within Trump's own political base and inner circle. The five-month-old partnership that launched a war together has curdled into mutual distrust and diverging strategic interests. The cancelled White House meeting was less about scheduling logistics than a public signal that the relationship has fundamentally changed.
Author James Rodriguez: "Netanyahu's attempt to engineer a meeting that Trump had no intention of keeping shows a leader increasingly desperate and isolated, and the White House's cold shoulder response is a message that even Trump has limits."
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