Although Donald Trump has previously hinted about running for an unconstitutional third presidential term in the United States, he suggested on Wednesday that he had another job in mind: prime minister of Israel.
Trump made the trollish suggestion during a Wednesday press gaggle after a reporter asked him what he’d said to Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, about holding off on strikes on Iran.
“He’s fine,” Trump said. “He’ll do whatever I want him to do. He’s a very good man. Uh, he’ll do whatever I want him to do. And he’s a great guy. To me, he’s a great guy. Don’t forget: He was a wartime prime minister, and he’s not treated right in Israel, in my opinion.”
Trump then inexplicably pivoted from praising Netanyahu to suggesting that Israelis might prefer him as their leader.
“I’m right now at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime minister, so maybe after I do this, I’ll go to Israel and run for prime minister,” Trump said. “I had a poll this morning — I’m [at] 99%, so that’s good.”
HuffPost attempted to find the poll that cited Trump’s whopping popularity in Israel, but was unsuccessful. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for the poll Trump cited.
A Jerusalem Post poll from February says 73% of Israelis consider Trump a better-than-average U.S. president where Israel is concerned, and 49% call him one of the best in history for Israel.
Although Trump was likely not making a serious suggestion, he’s blustered about leading other foreign nations before.
Last month, he suggested that he might run for president in Venezuela after toppling the country’s leader, dubiously claiming he was “polling higher than anybody has ever polled” there.
Trump isn’t currently eligible to be Israel’s prime minister anyway: Israeli law requires a prime minister to be, among other things, a member of the country’s parliament, and citizenship is required for that.
Still, lots of people encouraged Trump to pursue the idea.
Maybe you should go do that now. Or maybe, in a sense, you’re already doing that, serving Israel as their leader instead of ours.
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) May 20, 2026
Others claimed the idea would be a mere formality.
And some people were just flabbergasted that a U.S. president would even make such a comment.