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I think that, if true, this is a good thing. Like the US going into Iraq, Israel had no real endgame, and, like people have said below, US pressure may give Netanyahu an out. BUT... I'm not a Trump supporter. Six months ago the idea that Biden was even suggesting the necessity of a ceasefire was anathema to my IRL Republican friends. I personally tend to be pro-Israel so I'm kind of agnostic about the whole thing given my above comments about there being no endgame. Trump hasn't even been inaugurated yet and he's already expressed willingness to sell out his base. First in siding with Musk on H-1B visas and now by forcing Israel into terms that they find unacceptable. One further possibility is that Netanyahu, realizing that acceding to the deal ends his political career, tells Trump to pound sand. What's Trump going to do, withhold aid? Again, six months ago this would be unthinkable. Will the US become completely aloof from the Middle East? Will the Jews who support the Republican party exclusively because they're the most unwavering about Israel turn coat? Seems more likely than the pro-Palestinian protestors backing Trump. But what about the Muslims? Are they another group Trump is trying to pull into his orbit? How many more sacred cows is Trump willing to slaughter?
Back in 2016, I couldn't rule out the possibility that Trump was some kind of Trojan Horse meant to gin up the loyalty of a populist base only to betray them. What I had in mind at the time was that his "replacent" of Obamacare with "something better" was just code for instituting some kind of socialized healthcare system, since a popular Republican would have an easier time getting such a proposal through, even if heretofore no Republican would consider doing such a thing, and would be lambasted if they even tried. But Trump was so completely unlike any other politician that he might have been able to pull it off. His first term shattered any such illusions of moderation, as he leaned further into MAGA expectations, but this veneer is beginning to crack. Maybe he figured he needed to win a second term and solidify his base of support before delivering the coupe de grace. I wouldn't bet on it, but between siding with his billionaire friends over his own base on an issue central to his popularity and selling out Israel to Hamas, it wouldn't exactly surprise me. And the worst part is that the Trump true believers will tell me that he's being entirely consistent and that H-1B immigration is good, actually, and he's not selling out Israel because this war had no endgame anyway, and while all that may be true it doesn't change the fact that you have to do quite a lot of mental gymnastics to make this conform to anything Trump has said previously.
I think it’s a shot in the dark. I don’t see Bibi deciding to go with the deal because he already rejected it, and frankly doesn’t trust tge Palestinian side to really keep the deal. Given 75 years of “Israel signs peace deal, leaves area” and “to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Palestinians have rearmed and are trying to destroy Israel — again” he really can’t make a deal. It’s either an unconditional capitulation followed by military occupation to prevent rearming, or the situation as it existed on 10/6. He knows it, everybody who’s looked at the history knows it. And so I think Trump is offering the deal because he wants to say he tried.
Ok, then Israel gets cut off from the US' teat and no longer receives financial, military or social support from the US, and Trump initiates prosecutions against anybody who broke the law to assist them. It is easy to get confused and believe that Israel is the one holding the leash, given how many members of congress have an AIPAC handler, but the US is actually the dominant power here and what they want to happen matters. This deal is getting forced down Bibi's throat and he doesn't have any leverage here.
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I don't even think that offer is on the table.
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Does Trump's base compete for jobs with people who get into the US on H-1B visas? Not H-2A or H-2B?
Yes. Many roles performed by Americans now in companies not permitted to employ foreign nationals would likely be filled by H1b holders as we see this presently in organizations unfettered by prohibitions against employing foreign nationals.
I think they're still Trump's base, just not as visible or loud. Many will still have to move in very PMC circles.
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No, he is focusing on "Make America great again", not wasting endless sums of money fighting wars in the middle east that end up destroying the local christian population. His base has won absolutely nothing from the last few decades of neo con wars. His base got nothing but debt and mentally ill veterans from the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq. Providing Israel with endless welfare is the opposite of America first.
Trumps loyalty should be to the US, not people whose loyalty is to other countries.
You're engaging in the same fallacy that Democrats often engage in when it comes to Trump voters and other Republicans: Assuming what their interests are. Trump spent the entire campaign season portraying himself as the protector of Israel, and Republican politicians routinely criticized Biden for the mere suggestion that Israel should make concessions in cease fire talks. Remember when he threatened to withdraw supply of offensive weapons and the backlash surrounding that. I don't think Trump coming in and saying that Israel would have to completely withdraw from Gaza and release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners would have played well during the election. Especially considering he made no bones about the fact that Ukraine would have to surrender territory. You may agree with Trump's actions here, but it runs contrary to what anyone could have reasonably expected based on his prior statements. Whether or not this constitutes selling out his base depends on whether those who wholeheartedly supported Israel up until now are willing to cast these loyalties aside in favor of Trump.
I don't actually think that he's going backwards on that. Have you paid any attention to the international reaction to Israel's efforts at ethnically cleansing Gaza? Huge swathes of the world are currently off limits for Israeli government visits due to their arrest warrants, and there are criminal prosecutions against vast numbers of individual soldiers as well. They're hurting themselves too - the example I used in discussions like this previously was the IDF soldier who killed himself because he wasn't able to live with the guilt and trauma he picked up crushing the meat out of innocent people with a bulldozer. This conflict is not good for Israel in any real sense (though it may be good for Netanyahu's personal position) and continuing to enable it isn't doing Israel any real favours. It actually makes an incredible amount of sense that he'd pursue a strategy like this after portraying himself as the Protector of Israel - if a drug addict asks for a lot of money to buy drugs and a free space to do them in, you're not really protecting them in any sense of the word by continuing to enable their addiction.
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Who exactly do you think Trump's "base" is. More specifically, who matters more, the average (R) voter, or the "donor class"? I can't find it again, but I remember a bit circulating right-wing circles online some years ago, quoting an interview with a Republican "campaign advisor" who got a little too honest with the interviewer and said that his job was basically to help GOP candidates more convincingly lie to red state rubes about how they're going to do the various stupid things these voters want, all the while knowing, as all Republican candidates do, that once in office their job will be to do none of that, and deliver what the deep-pocket donors want instead.
"Should be" ≠ "is."
I've been heavily persuaded by thinkers like Yarvin and Parvini (who have many disagreements) about how elite backers matter so much more than the peasant masses who have nothing but their (meaningless) votes, and "democracy" is a sham. For example, the H1B fight: Musk is going to get his way, because he matters, and millions of "Trump voters" simply don't.
For an alternative narrative (which I don't exactly share) I know some right-wing anti-Trump people — a very much different group from the "Never Trumper" crowd — who have their own narrative about 'who is Trump's real base.' These acquaintances held that the "Russian collusion" narrative was pretty much correct in all the broad strokes… except for having the wrong country. They argued that when people say that Trump didn't (or wasn't able to) deliver for his base in his first term, they're wrong: Trump very much did deliver what his actual backers, the people who installed him in the White House, put him there to do: "moving the embassy to Jerusalem and tax cuts for (((billionaires)))." (Cue more comments about Kushner, "the Tribe," "ZOG," and how it would have been better if Harris won, because at least then we'd have more attention paid to the "ongoing genocide" in Gaza, etc.)
And further, I'd conclude by asking why we should be trying to "make America great again" when "American greatness" is what got Western Civilization into the mess it's in in the first place.
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