President Trump on Monday suggested that Miriam Adelson, one of his biggest donors during his 2024 campaign, “loves” Israel more than the United States, comments he made during an address to the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem.
“I’m gonna get her in trouble with this one, but I actually asked her once, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? Israel. The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That might mean Israel,” the president said.
Miriam’s late husband, Sheldon Adelson, was also a major contributor to Trump’s previous presidential campaigns, and Trump credited the couple for pro-Israel moves he made in his first administration, including recognizing the Israeli annexation of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
“Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office, they’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else I could think of. Look at her sitting there so innocently, she got $60 billion in the bank … and she loves Israel,” Trump said in his Knesset address, which Miriam attended.
“Her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved him, very supportive of me. And he’d call up, ‘Can I come over and see you?’ I say, ‘Sheldon, I’m the president of the United States, it doesn’t work that way. He’d come in and do good, though. But they were very responsible for so much, including getting me thinking about Golan Heights,” Trump added.
The president made similar comments while on the campaign trail last year. “Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably more than almost anybody outside of people that worked there. And as soon as I’d give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else. I’d say, ‘give me a couple of weeks, will you please,'” he said at the Israeli-American Council National Summit in September 2024.
