Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump claims to be a big fan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In an attempt to talk up his pro-Israel credentials, Trump suggests that he was one of the celebrities Netanyahu reached out to for an endorsement in 2013.
“According to what he said, I’m the only celebrity — he’s used the word celebrity — this was a while ago, that did commercials, that he asked to do commercials,” he said during an interview on the Hugh Hewitt radio show in September.
According to a document we came across this week, the history between Netanyahu and Trump goes back to 2007 when the Likud leader plotted his return to the Prime Minister’s office. In October 2010, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth published a list of potential major donors prepared by the Netanyahu campaign during the Likud Party’s leadership contest in 2007. The list includes names of foreign and local donors and a reordered list in Netanyahu’s own handwriting, in which he divided donors into four categories according to whether contacting them was “worth the effort.” The first group, according to Yediot, included the foreigners worthwhile of contacting. Numbers 3 and 4 were marked next to the names of millionaires with a small chance of donating.
Donald Trump was one of the donors Netanyahu was seeking to reach out to although he was placed in the fourth category with only a small chance of donating.
Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law Charles Kushner was also on the list in the first category.
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