President Trump said in an interview that aired Wednesday that he was “perturbed” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call on Monday over Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, which haven’t stopped despite Trump suggesting some sort of ceasefire was reached.
The president responded to a question about a report from Axios that said he swore at Netanyahu over the escalations, telling the Israeli leader that he’s “fucking crazy” and that “everybody hates Israel” because of its attacks on Lebanon. Trump said the allegations in the report were true, suggesting that the White House, known for its efforts to crack down on leaks, wanted the story to be published.
“I wouldn’t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon. At some point, I said, ‘Bibi, we gotta stop this’ … but we’ve worked very well together,” the president told New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.
Netanyahu was also asked about the report and downplayed the idea of a rift between himself and the US president. “We have common goals. Sometimes, we have, as in the best of families, you have these tactical disagreements,” he told CNBC. “We always find a way to work them out, and we do so as great friends. We can disagree in the morning, and by the afternoon, we have common action.”
The Times of Israel reported last year that during the lead-up to the June 2025 US-Israeli war against Iran, the US and Israel engaged in a deception campaign to keep Iran off guard that involved leaks to the media portraying a gap between Trump and Netanyahu over attacking Iran while the two leaders were actually on the same page.
After speaking with Netanyahu on Monday, Trump declared twice on Truth Social that Israel and Hezbollah agreed to stop targeting each other, but the war in south Lebanon continues to rage, and the head of the Israeli military said on Wednesday that there is “no ceasefire” for the IDF in Lebanon.
Other media reports said that there was an understanding that Israel wouldn’t target Beirut or its southern Dahiyeh, which Netanyahu threatened to target on Monday, if Hezbollah didn’t attack northern Israel. But Hezbollah has rejected that it agreed to a “partial ceasefire,” and Lebanese media reported Wednesday that Israel bombed a car just south of Beirut. Israeli media also reported that Hezbollah drones entered airspace in northern Israel.
Trump has previously declared a ceasefire in Lebanon that didn’t change the situation on the ground. On April 17, he said in a post on Truth Social that Israel was “prohibited” from further attacks in Lebanon, but the strikes never stopped.
