Sen. Mark Warner said, during an appearance on MeidasTouch show “On Sunday with Jack Cocchiarella,” that Israel’s actions in Lebanon and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s alignment with President Trump were a “breaking point” for him. “I’ve been a longtime supporter of Israel, but I got to the breaking point on the last set of resolutions and voted for one of them to make sure that Israel – the settlers were not continuing to do, I think, outrageous things on the West Bank, and to use, for example, bulldozers in southern Lebanon to destroy Lebanese homes.” “I think you will see more of that coming forward. And I do think that as someone who still very much believes Israel has a right to defend itself, they have made a strategic error by putting all their eggs in the basket of Donald Trump. And we will see how this continues to play out,” Warner said.

JACK COCCHIARELLA: I want to talk about the supposed deal, or at least the memorandum of understanding that Donald Trump has signed, and some of his mouthpieces in the media are trying to tout as the greatest thing ever. Most of them are actually pushing back. And it’s very interesting to me, the select few who are really pushing back – Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin. You said at the beginning of this war that there was no imminent threat to the United States, but only a supposed imminent threat that at least Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis were trying to say was being posed from Iran against Israel. And you said viewing that imminent threat to Israel as an imminent threat to the United States was completely uncharted territory. Now, since then, of course, we’ve seen Israel consistently, I would say, act against U.S. interest in ending this war by continuously violating ceasefires, international law. According to CNN, right now Israel is pushing media figures to try to pressure Donald Trump into either ending the deal or trying to create more favorable terms for Israel. In the past few months since the beginning of this war, how has your view of the U.S.-Israel relationship changed? SEN. MARK WARNER: Well, I think it’s been fractured. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu thought he had this incredibly close tie with Donald Trump and that he could convince him to do most things. And, you know, the one thing that is the case, and I think virtually everybody has learned this, at the end of the day Donald Trump cares about one thing, and that’s Donald Trump. And the fact that he is declaring victory after Iran – I’m glad he’s ended the conflict. We don’t need more soldiers killed. We were not going to bomb the Iranians into submission. Obviously, the effect that has had on the economy and gas prices: devastating. But as good a salesman as Donald Trump is, there is no way that Donald Trump is going to convince anyone other than complete sycophants that America’s better off now than they were at the end of February, when he started his war of choice. JACK COCCHIARELLA: Certainly. And if you think that relationship is fractured, what are the steps that you think you and your colleagues in the Senate should take to change the nature of that relationship? SEN. MARK WARNER: Well, I think we have to hold – you know, I think we need to sometimes separate the people of Israel from the Israeli government, just as I think we ask the rest of the world to sometimes separate the American people from the current American government in terms of Donald Trump. And I think things like trying to presume the idea that Israel should stop the war in Lebanon, if that actually happens – but I doubt it will. I think it also has been a huge mistake within Israel to simply become, where Israel used to be a bipartisan issue, where Israel and the Israeli government in particular has said, All right, we’re just going to side entirely with the Republicans. We’re going to side entirely with Donald Trump. We are not going to try to build a bipartisan sense of support for the right of Israel to exist. And I think that strategy, as we see this even further deterioration between Netanyahu and Trump, is not good long term for Israel. And I think this was a conscious political decision that the prime minister made. And I think it is coming back to bite him. JACK COCCHIARELLA: Certainly. And the continuation of the strikes and the invasion of southern Lebanon has also been deeply damaging to the United States in that it’s prolonged this war. What are the powers that you think the Senate needs to be using to pressure Israel into stopping what we just saw again, more bombing of southern Lebanon? Don’t Democratic senators need to be leading the charge on putting pressure on Israel to stop in the benefit of the United States? SEN. MARK WARNER: You know, I’ve been a longtime supporter of Israel, but I got to the breaking point on the last set of resolutions and voted for one of them to make sure that Israel – the settlers were not continuing to do, I think, outrageous things on the West Bank, and to use, for example, bulldozers in southern Lebanon to destroy Lebanese homes. I think you will see more of that coming forward. And I do think that as someone who still very much believes Israel has a right to defend itself, they have made a strategic error by putting all their eggs in the basket of Donald Trump. And we will see how this continues to play out. Now, one of the things it’ll be interesting to see – one of the conditions of this so-called memorandum of understanding, and the irony that Donald Trump signed it at Versailles. Nobody must have been a history – you know, there have been more bad treaties of Versailles over historical times than you can count. And the idea he didn’t realize he was walking into, like, a historical [unclear] disaster is telling as well. But remember, part of this agreement is supposedly that Israel and Lebanon will stop fighting. And we’ll see what the Trump administration does if that fighting doesn’t stop.

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