U.S. President Donald Trump commented for the first time overnight Sunday on the decision to task Yashar! chairman Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel's next government. Though he endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the election, Trump said the two leaders were closely aligned in their political positions. "They are very similar in their policies and positions. He said very nice things about me, that he likes me. They both support what I'm doing. We'll see what happens," Trump said.
Before the election, Trump had publicly backed Netanyahu's candidacy. "If Israel has the wrong leader, meaning anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do the job in Iran itself, and I have no inclination to do that," he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. "That is the kind of partner the United States of America requires from Israel, a country for which it has done so much."
Meanwhile, five days after the Republican defeat in the midterm elections, Trump is preparing for his first extensive interview since losing control of both houses of Congress. In an interview for CBS' "60 Minutes," scheduled to air overnight, Trump faces questions about the future of his presidency, the electoral defeat and the possibility that he will have to govern the remaining two years of his term against a hostile Congress that could launch investigations into him and senior members of his administration.
The interview, conducted Friday by journalist Ross Douthat in the White House's Roosevelt Room, comes amid one of the most significant political upheavals of Trump's second term. Democrats flipped more than 40 seats in the House of Representatives, secured a majority in the Senate and regained control of Congress after two years in which Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of the legislature.
Before the election, Trump had publicly backed Netanyahu's candidacy
(Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP)
The results have raised questions about Trump's ability to advance his agenda and heightened concerns among those close to him about political and legal confrontations with the new Democratic majority.
The election defeat has already triggered changes at the highest levels of the White House. On Friday, Trump announced that he was replacing his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, with one of his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, widely regarded as the architect of the administration's immigration policies.
During the CBS interview, the president was also questioned about the possibility of additional dismissals, his future relationship with Democrats, the economy and the wars in Iran and Ukraine.