World
‘All the Jews are sick of you,’ Trump said to have told Netanyahu in 2025 phone call
US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “all the Jews are sick” of him during a fiery conversation concerning negotiations over a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip last year, according to a book published Tuesday by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
The book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” examines the first year of Trump’s second term in office, during which the US brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that brought an end to the two-year war in Gaza.
According to write-ups of the book, Trump blew up at Netanyahu in a phone call with the Israeli premier and Jewish top US aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, telling him: “Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi. All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you.”
The call reportedly took place during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, while Trump was pushing his 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza and rebuild the war-torn Strip.
Earlier that month, Israel had launched an airstrike targeting Hamas’s leadership in Qatar as they were gathering to discuss a potential ceasefire deal with Israel.
Though the strike failed to kill the key Hamas leaders it was targeting, it did kill several lower-level members in the Palestinian terror group, along with one Qatari guard. Following the attack, Qatar — which had until then played a key role in negotiations between Israel and Hamas — refused to serve as a mediator.
It was unclear from the excerpts whether Trump’s blow-up at Netanyahu was related to the Qatar strike or not.
Trump also reportedly told Netanyahu in the same phone call that he wasn’t allowed to “back out of” Washington’s proposed ceasefire deal for Gaza.
“I’m the best friend Israel ever had,” he reportedly told the Israeli leader. “Everybody hates you, and I’ve stood by you.”
A separate excerpt from the book released last week alleged that Trump also called Netanyahu a “con man” in the early months of his second administration.
The airing of the quotes comes at a time when the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu appears to be increasingly strained due to disagreements over the deal between the US and Iran, as well as Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In recent weeks, Trump has called Netanyahu “fucking crazy” and accused him of having “no fucking judgment.” He also told the Axios news site that although his relationship with the Israeli leader is “good,” the US has to “keep him a little bit sane.”
The president also took to rehashing an old grudge last week, recalling in a press conference at the G7 summit how Israel purportedly pulled out of a 2020 joint operation to kill top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Trump had harked back countless times about how frustrated he was at Netanyahu for supposedly leaving the US to take out Soleimani on its own, but stopped bringing it up over two years ago, when he became the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee and patched up ties with Netanyahu after lashing out at him for congratulating Joe Biden on winning the 2020 US presidential election.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
