Yes, Trump Is a 'Pro-Israel' Hardliner

Trump has to rely on attacking Biden for generic “weakness” because he probably doesn’t disagree with most of what Biden has done.

I missed this story about Trump and Gaza when it came out last week, but it is terribly misleading in some of its main claims:

Mr. Trump’s hands-off approach to the bloody Middle East conflict reflects the profound anti-interventionist shift he has brought about in the Republican Party [bold mine-DL] over the past eight years and has been colored by his feelings about Mr. Netanyahu, whom he may never forgive for congratulating President Biden for his 2020 victory.

Trump has not “brought about” a “profound anti-interventionist shift” in the Republican Party. To the extent that some Republicans are sometimes less inclined to support foreign wars than they used to be, that was already happening during the Obama years before Trump entered politics in reaction against the disasters of the Bush era. Trump exploited some of that sentiment for his own purposes when he ran in 2016 by dishonestly posturing as an opponent of the Iraq war after the fact, but his foreign policy platform was defined by escalating existing wars and picking fights with other countries. When it came to Israel, he was more supportive of hardline policies than any president before him.