Israel has lost Americans

The president isn't the most reliable narrator when it comes to his war in Iran. You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense... But as it drags on and the Ayatollah gets replaced by his even more extreme Ayatollah son, you got to wonder why we're there. If you ask some of the people closest to President Trump, the answer seems to be Israel. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. Senator Lindsey Graham told the Wall Street Journal that he coached Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to lobby Trump to join a war against Iran. He admitted that. Israel is driving American foreign policy at the exact moment that Americans on the left and on the right increasingly disapprove of Israel. Israel has lost Americans on today explained.

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very deadly, destructive war that has killed American troops. The Pentagon says more than 140 U.S. service members have been wounded over the past 10 days during Operation Epic Fury in the Middle East. Eight severely on top of the seven U.S. troops killed since the war began. It's killed many, many civilians in the Middle East. The Red Crescent says over 1,300 Iranians have been killed in one week of war. The war has so far killed nearly 500 people in Lebanon and 11 in Israel. And it's created a lot of chaos for the Gulf states. And most directly for Americans, it's raising the price of gasoline. Filling up has become a lot more expensive, 43 cents a gallon more. Gas prices have spiked the highest that they've been since 2023. I'm paying 40 bucks, but that doesn't get me a full tank anymore. So you take all that together, and I believe that support for Israel in the long term, certainly in the Democratic Party, is going to continue to slide. And you're starting to see some examples of that now with how the 28 candidates are talking about Israel in particular. Well, I want to talk about how this war is influencing the left's views. of Israel as well as the rights, but let's go in that order. So what have you seen in terms of fractures on the left over this war when it comes to views on Israel? Well, you're talking about the Democratic Party broadly. At the top of the party, you still have older Democrats who are very supportive of Israel, but don't like that Trump did not see congressional authorization for the war. So that's the argument of Chuck Schumer, the minority leader. Trump doesn't care about being honest and direct with the American people. He doesn't care about the soldiers. He's putting in harm's way. Hakeem Jeffries, the... Minority leader of the House, probably the next speaker. Donald Trump, without justification and without coming to Congress, has gotten America into a Middle Eastern war that we know will not end well. And then you have a lot of younger Democrats, progressives certainly, who are extremely critical. have wanted to do things for a while now, like conditioned military aid to Israel. I think that the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza. People should know, people might need to hit the streets again to make sure that the government knows that we don't want our taxpayer money going towards that. I'm not anti-Israel. I'm pro-people. And also are really trying to rethink how the American foreign policy orients itself around Israel, where for a long time, Democrats would say whatever Israel wants to do, they should get to do, that they're the democracy in the Middle East, they're the Jewish state. You're starting to see a real shift. And even among the mainstream, you know, sort of center-left candidates, you are...

Right. And I guess as you're sort of suggesting here, they can't really do a ton about it yet. But the earliest sign of how this might be influencing where this party is going might be the midterms. And another thing you think about when you think about the midterms is campaign fundraising. Of course, APAC has been a major donor to Democrats and also Republicans, but we can get to that later. Does a John Asaf coming out and speaking out against Israel change the likelihood of his ability to fundraise now? Well, it's remarkable has been the backlash to APEC and the amount of politicians who say they won't take APEC donations who are willing to criticize the organization. You start there. People were saying, I don't think our tax pay a dollar should go to starve children in Gaza. And APEC said, really? Okay, we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to defeat you. Well, I've never taken money from APEC, and I'm not taking money from APEC in this campaign. You're seeing what's happening in Gaza makes me sick to my stomach. Tom Malinowski, who's the former congressman who's running for his old seat in New Jersey, he lost the primary in part because APEC decided to spend millions of dollars against him. And he offered what were in the context of even today, mild criticism of the Israeli government. So there's anger toward APEC will affect fundraising. I think not so much in this online era. I mean, one thing about the Internet is it's much easier to fundraise, but the Israel's skeptical position is growing or even those willing to offer small criticisms of the government. And... The APEC approach to all of that has been you bring a hammer and you keep hitting and you keep hitting and you scare the politicians and you bludgeon them. And over time, you get compliance. And there's a lot of mainstream Democrats who are tired of that. And they're telling APEC, why don't you just go deal with the Republicans? We don't want to beat your conferences anymore. We don't want your money.

The Republicans, when we return on Today Explained. This is advertiser content from Verizon Business. My name is Sean Mollinson. I'm the owner of Roving Sporting Club in Brooklyn, New York. The best thing about watching soccer is it's continuous. You never know what's going to happen or when it's going to happen. It's important to have the place you go to watch soccer because of the camaraderie you build with everyone else, with the bartenders, with the staff, with the other people who come to the bar. The community here at Robling Sporting Club, it's unlike any other sports bar that I've found in New York or in Brooklyn or anywhere, really. Like, you might not know anybody when you walk in, but you definitely are going to know people when you leave. The FIFA World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. You need a reliable network to make sure you can manage all of those different games at different time zones throughout the day. Verizon Business keeps things moving.

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Today, Explain is back. I'm still Sean Ramosferam, and I'm still with Ross Barkin from New York Magazine. Ross, you were kind of teeing up that APEC could just have to court the Republicans a little harder now that Democrats are breaking with the group. What is broadly going on on the right, where, you know, the right is in charge, but also the right isn't uniform on Israel anymore, yeah? So at the top of the Republican Party, you have the Israel Hawks. The strongly pro-Israel side controls the party. So you have Marco Rubio. I'm confident in saying that President Trump's administration will continue to be perhaps the most pro-Israel administration in American history. Senators like Lindsey Graham. To all the anti-Seminites, to all the isolationists, I don't believe. Forget it. I'm not with you. I'm with Israel. I will be with Israel to our dying day. Tom Cotton. Why does Israel have a responsibility provide aid to Gaza? Israel was the victim of an unprovoked, vicious attack on October 7th. We didn't provide aid to Germany and Japan during World War II. And Ted Cruz. Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible. Those who bless Israel will be blessed. And those who curse Israel will be cursed. You could take off many senators who are very hawkish on Israel or have evangelicals. ties. An evangelical base of the Republican Party has been a driver of its pro-Israel politics for decades, along with the money that flows into the party. So that traditional pro-Israel side is still strong. And what is interesting is the shift at the bottom. Just as young progressives and younger voters broadly in the Democratic Party have grown is real skeptical. You're seeing a burgeoning grassroots Israel skeptical MAGA way. Being a conservative or being a Trump supporter or being part of MAGA does not mean you have to accept another Middle East war. Which just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? But there's also just a real dissatisfaction with... Israel among 20-something young conservatives who are not especially religious. They signed up for America first. They voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because he said, You're not going to have a war with me and you're not going to have a third world war with me. That I can tell you. He said, We are not the policemen of the world. He attacked the Bush administration. He attacked new conservatives. He made a mockery of men like Marco Rubio. told them that Republican Party is dead, and we're going to build an ultra-nationalist, closed border, isolationist country. I will end the illegal immigration crisis by closing our border and finishing the wall, most of which I've already built. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first. America first. And so if you voted for that, you are wondering why are we in this war? And Nick Fuentes is speaking to some of these orders. Well, if Trump is an errand boy for Israel, then you got to shut down his government. And that means you got to go into the midterms and you got to get the Democrats in.

And the Democrats hopefully will impede the administration. Nick Spontes is an anti-Semite, and he's also anti-Trump. And he said, I don't vote for Trump. And he kind of exists in his own wing. But... I think what's important to keep in mind is someone like Nick Fuentes or some like Carlsonian, some like Owens, not all their followers are anti-Semitic. I mean, they have a lot of people listening to them. And a lot of them are just looking for conservative voices who will criticize what's happening, who will look at the war in Iran and say, this doesn't make a lot of sense. This is an effort to expand the territory and the influence of Israel in the Middle East. Of course. Again, not an attack on Israel. It's just a fact. Who's the bigger terrorist is the question today? I would say as an American that if we're going to get behind a regime change, it should be in Israel first. And I do think this is going to be a longer term shift. I do think in one to two decades from now, even the Republican Party might alter how it views Israel. And so I do think in the coming years, you're going to see perhaps a movement back more to the Reagan-Bush approach. But in the meanwhile, as you point out, this is not America first. Is that tearing the base apart, the MAGA base? Or are they willing to, like in so many other cases that preceded this one, follow their leader wherever he may want to go? You know, I guess the way I would put it is I would distinguish between the hardcore Republican who will support Trump no matter what. And they're excited about this war. And then you have maybe someone who voted for Trump in 2024. Maybe they voted in 2020 for Trump as well. They consider themselves right meaning or conservative, but they're not showing up at a Trump rally. They're not wearing the merch. They just, they don't like Democrats that much. I do think there's a lot of more marginal. Republican voters who are going to sour on this war if it drags on. That's a key too. I mean, the remarkable thing about this Iran war is that it's not popular already. broadly speaking, if it is in the Republican Party. And that's a shift from what usually happens with wars, where initially they do enjoy a kind of uniform support or there's a rally around the flag effect. We've skipped that entirely. We're almost to the point where we're at the war-weary part of the conflict. And so if this war is going on months from now, if gas prices have not gone down, I do think there's going to be more and more Republicans and perhaps even people who are strongly supportive MAGA who do turn on Trump.

Republicans in Congress had the chance to rein in the president last week. They opted not to do so. We asked Ross if that's just the nature of Republican politics at this moment. It's the nature of following him. It's also Iran as a villain. I mean, for like the real pro-Israel Republican, they are like the number one villain. The fact that Trump could say, I killed the Ayatollah, even though... Nothing has changed in the country. And his son took over, right? His son took over. Repression remains, and anyone who studies Iran even a little bit could tell you that's what would happen. It's an extremely complicated society with a very entrenched theocratic regime. So I do think for Republicans, it's hard to buck Trump right away because killing the Ayatoll is a big deal. It feels a bit like for them when Obama got bin Laden, which I think Americans broadly supported. So I understand in a way where they are, but I do think more are getting nervous. Just between what's happened in the past few weeks and Israel's war, In Gaza, it does feel like we've seen a dramatic evolution in Israel's place as a sort of third rail in American politics. With Gavin Newsom calling the country sort of an apartheid state. With people saying America owns Israel, these are things that were, as we discussed, like they would get you in trouble. You would be called anti-Semitic. But it doesn't feel like... Israel's doing a ton to beat the allegations anymore. No, they're not. And that's the issue. You have a war. that Israel plainly wanted and either worked in tandem with the United States to begin or initiated and pulled the United States along almost as a junior partner. One cannot say that the United States foreign policy is not linked to the Israeli government. And the shift politically has been extremely dramatic. If you were in the 2010s and used the term apartheid or even the early 20s, you would... face censure and probably not have a political future. And you look at how someone like Hillary Clinton spoke about Israel as our unstinting ally. You know, the Clinton-era Democrat could not acknowledge the occupation in the West Bank, for example. So certainly, if you're an Israel hawk or supporter of the Israeli government, you are now culturally on the defensive and politically. I mean, you have power in the White House, but beyond that, politicians are not nearly as afraid of violating certain taboos or what were taboos and are now no longer taboos.

And what does that mean for our relationship with Israel, for our position in the Middle East? Because it's a weird position to be. And right now, with the United States going to war with Israel against Iran, it feels like this relationship's the most locked in it's ever been. And yet, here we are having a conversation about all of the fissures. It's the most locked in as long as Trump is president, and certainly Benjamin Netanyahu runs Israel. Yeah. But leaders change. And will it be so locked in in 2029, in 2030, in 31? And in the United States, you're going to have it, if it's a Democrat in office, I do think this will be the least pro-Israel Democrat you've seen in the modern era, whoever is president. And if it's a Republican, after what's happened in Iran, after what's happened in Gaza, after the chaos of the last few years, even the next Republican could at least if they're going to be very supportive, not. Give Israel every single thing it wants.

Ross Barkin, at NYMag.com, you can find his latest, including Trump has handed the Democrats a new winning issue for the midterms, the day Israel lost America, and the Democratic Party's breakup with A-PAC is almost complete. At today explained, you can find Hottie Mawaddy, who produced Miranda Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who edited Andrea Lopez Crusado, who fact-checked, and Patrick Boyd, who was on the mix. Tomorrow, we'll take you to Hollywood. This is Advertiser Content from Verizon Business. Let's go, what you got here? My name is Sean Malinson. I'm the owner of Roving Sporting Club in Brooklyn, New York. The best thing about watching soccer is, it's continuous. You never know what's going to happen or when it's going to happen. It's important to have the place you go to watch soccer because of the camarader you build with everyone else, with the bartenders, with the staff, with the other people who come to the bar. The community here at Robling Sporting Club, it's unlike any other sports bar that I've found in New York or in Brooklyn or anywhere, really. Like, you might not know anybody when you walk in, but you definitely are going to know people when you leave. The FIFA World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world. You need a reliable network to make sure you can manage all of those different games at different time zones throughout the day. Verizon Business keeps things moving.

Verizon Business helps make sure every small business wins. As a proud sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Verizon supports the drive, resilience, and ambition that fuels small business owners. Learn how you can strengthen your business at Verizon.com slash business. That refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along? It's here. Wayfair's Black Friday and July sale is happening now so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less. Get up to 80% off area rugs and up to 60% off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget, and space. Plus, free shipping. Black Friday and July ends July 27th. Shop today at Wayfair.com. Every style, every home.