Make Israel Great Again

Donald Trump for President...of Israel

Former President Trump made Orwellian waves last week at an Israeli American Council event ostensibly organized around fighting antisemitism, exemplifying the modern Republican tendency to inflame Jew hatred under the guise of protecting Jewish and Israeli interests.

Much ink has been (rightly) spilled over the incitement, but less attention has been drawn to Trump’s ingratiating overtures to the Jewish state: “I was the best president toward the people of Israel…October 7 would have never, ever happened if I were President…We’re going to make Israel great again!”

As a practitioner of Christian politics, if not the religion itself, Trump expresses a particular form of affection for Israel and the Jewish people: “I’m the one that’s protecting you,” he claims, “We have a lot of good Christians that love Israel, in many ways they love Israel more than the Jewish people.”

Appealing directly to long-held Israeli, but domestically controversial interests, Trump cited his administration’s scrapping of the Iran nuclear deal, recognition of Israeli control over the disputed Golan Heights, and concrete steps affirming Jerusalem as a singularly Israeli municipality. Further conflating Jewish voters with Israelis, he lauded his electability in Israel:

“Right now I could run for any office in Israel. I could run for Prime Minister! I’m at 99% in the polls, I’m the most popular person in Israel.”

His ego and his numbers are inflated, but in a general sense Trump is not wrong. The criminal defendant is hugely popular in Israel, enjoying twice the public support given to Vice President Kamala Harris. If he actively sought a seat in the Knesset, no doubt he would secure it.

But serving as a member of parliament, or even as Prime Minister, would be the wrong fit for Trump. Allergic to accountability and effort, this man needs a largely ceremonial post insulated from the whims of voters and coalition dynamics. Let him serve as Israel’s 12^th President when Isaac Herzog steps down in 2028.

It’s the perfect job for Trump! The Israeli president serves as a figurehead, traditionally coasting above party politics to embrace much of society through common culture and vision. The president has negligible executive responsibility but gets to sign all legislation. Let Trump bring Israel together the way he has successfully, over the course of a decade, united the right in America. He would enjoy a seven-year ego boost of pomp and adoration without having to work at all to achieve it.

While many muse on the future of Trumpism if he loses in November, let’s consider a more immediate question—What will become of the man himself? Without winning back the presidential means to evade his prosecutions-in-progress, what options remain for Trump to escape judicial accountability?

The former President has taken to invoking the late great Hannibal Lecter, but a better villainous exemplar may be Francis Ford Coppola’s Hyman Roth: Based loosely on the real-life Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky, Roth attempts to emigrate to the nascent state of Israel in the face of his own imminent criminal comeuppance.

Hyman Roth seeks only sanctuary in the newly established Jewish homeland. Trump can, and should, aspire for something greater: let him become Israel’s first non-Jewish President. And what an achievement! Israel, the most democratic country in the region, electing its first Christian President. What religious pluralism.

On both values and vibes, the MAGA progenitor is better fit to lead the Jewish state than the United States. He disdains the constitution and calls for its suspension. Good news for Trump: Israel doesn’t even have one! He also wages policies and rhetoric conducive to a fascistic ethnostate, but Israel already is one.

In a practical sense, absorption as a newly minted Israeli citizen would bestow on Trump substantial legal shelter. Israel and the United States follow bilateral extradition agreements but exceptions apply for political crimes and for charges meriting potential capital punishment—both of which, debatably, could protect Trump.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

If Trump fled to Israel late this year or early next year, he would have three years to rest and recover from the grueling 2024 campaign, network with Israeli political and cultural leaders, and play lots and lots of golf.

Golf is the big piece, the greatly diminished septuagenarian’s last remaining refuge. A historic stronghold of (predominantly white) patriarchal power, the country club conveniently doubles as Trump’s rec center of choice. The golf course is his comfort zone, and no deranged would-be assassin can take that away.

The golfer-in-chief would have ample time to master Israel’s two courses, but more importantly get a head start conducting fairway diplomacy across the region well in advance of 2028: United Arab Emirates has 26 golf clubs, Egypt has 24, Turkey has 20, and Saudi Arabia has ten. Oman boasts eight, Cyprus seven, Qatar five, and Bahrain three. Jordan has two and Iran, Iraq and Lebanon—for now—each have one golf course.

In the leadup to his Presidency and while in office, Trump can golf every day of the week while advancing his own interests and those of the Israeli government. What a blessing. Is he even aware that the standard number of golf course holes—eighteen—gives “life” in Jewish mysticism?

Perhaps Trump’s crowning achievement as head of state will be establishing the first golf course and country club in Gaza, working in close partnership with his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Once Israel completes its project of ethnically cleansing and razing Gaza, the President could triumphantly oversee construction of the Trump National Golf Club Khan Yunis.

If he becomes a citizen in 2025, ascends to the presidency in 2028 and steps down as legally required in 2035, the Knesset would have a cool decade to map out for Trump a novel post-Presidency honorific. Or presuming his criminality expands rather than abates, Trump could flee his adoptive nation and once again seek refuge in an even more rogue state.

“Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for the Czar?” asks the midcentury musical Fiddler on the Roof. “A blessing for the Czar?” responds the Rabbi, “Why of course! May God bless and keep the Czar…far away from us!”

Amen.