Donald Trump spent part of Election Day 2026 doing what he often does: making a headline that blends politics with pure showmanship. During a phone interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, the US president said his approval rating in Israel is so high that he could simply move there and run the country if American voters ever lost interest in him. He put the number at 99% and called it the highest approval rating of anyone in history, without citing any polling data to back it up.
The remark landed on the same morning Americans were voting in the 2026 midterm elections, a day when Trump was calling into friendly media to boost Republican turnout. Instead of sticking to voting lines, he drifted into a hypothetical about packing his bags for Jerusalem and taking over as prime minister. The comment was clearly a joke, but it pulled together two things Trump loves to talk about: his popularity and his self-image as a leader who can go anywhere and win.
The Exact Words That Started the Buzz
Trump’s comment came in a casual back-and-forth about the US-Israel relationship. He praised Israel as a partner and then pivoted to his own standing there.
“I’m at 99% approval rating in Israel. Can you believe it? In fact, if people ever got tired of me in the US, I’ll move to Israel and become prime minister,” Trump said.
He kept going, adding that he holds “the highest approval rating of anybody in history” and tying that claim to his administration’s actions against Iran.
“They’ve been a great partner, but what we did, we stopped Iran. Iran was an unstoppable force. We knocked the hell out of them,” he said.
No poll was named. No survey was cited. The 99% figure was simply stated as fact by the president, and the audience on Fox & Friends was left to decide whether to take it as a boast, a joke, or both. Trump has used the same 99% number before. In May 2026, he made a similar remark about running for Israeli prime minister while talking to reporters, again claiming near-total support in Israel.
A Joke With a Policy Announcement Attached
The prime minister line was not the only Israel-related item Trump dropped during the same phone call. He also said the United States would stop providing roughly $4 billion in annual military assistance to Israel by the end of 2026, arguing that the country no longer needs American money.
“Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and we made a deal months ago that we’re stopping,” Trump told Fox & Friends.
The existing security agreement between the US and Israel was signed in 2016 under then-President Barack Obama and put into effect in 2019. It runs for ten years and provides about $3.8 billion annually through 2028, mostly to help Israel buy American-made weapons. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had raised the idea of ending the aid years ago and that the two leaders had discussed it for a long time. According to Trump, Israel is now prosperous enough to handle its own defense purchases.
The announcement came with a political angle. Trump said the aid had become a “bad talking point” for Republicans, pointing to criticism from figures like Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who has pushed for ending US military support to Israel.
“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it? It’s a bad talking point,” Trump said, according to The Washington Post.
How People Reacted to the Prime Minister Line
Social media did not miss the absurdity of a sitting US president joking about relocating to run another country. Critics turned the comment into a punchline almost immediately.
Trump critic George Conway responded with a sarcastic post that quickly circulated:
“Much as this offer is tempting, to wish this upon Israel would be the height of anti-Semitism, which we must reject in all forms,” Conway wrote.
Progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan framed the moment as a perfect snapshot of the 2026 midterms:
“I can’t believe he actually said this out loud,” Hasan posted on X. “On Fox. The 2026 midterms summed up in one moment”.
The Tennessee Holler account offered a shorter summary: “Trump threatens us with a good time”.
The joke also drew attention to the gap between Trump’s stated popularity in Israel and his numbers at home. TMZ reported that Trump’s US approval rating stood at 32%, although the outlet did not identify the poll behind that figure. No credible public polling has shown Trump at 99% approval inside Israel either, a point several outlets noted while covering the remark.
Why Trump Keeps Bringing Up Israel
Trump’s political bond with Israel is not new. He has long pointed to pro-Israel moves from his first term — recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and brokering the Abraham Accords — as evidence of his standing with conservative Israeli voters and leaders. Netanyahu has publicly praised Trump in strong terms, calling him “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House” during a Knesset address.
That relationship gives the joke a layer beyond a simple throwaway line. Trump was not just claiming popularity in a foreign country. He was reminding his Fox & Friends audience that he sees himself as a figure with global appeal, someone who could supposedly win an election anywhere. The fact that he attached the joke to a real policy shift — ending $4 billion in annual aid — made the moment more than just a quip. It was a political two-for-one: a boast about his brand and an announcement about the US-Israel money relationship, delivered in the same breath.
What the Aid Decision Means for the US-Israel Relationship
Ending the annual aid package is not a small change. The 2016 agreement was structured as a ten-year commitment, and the $3.8 billion annual figure has been a fixed part of US-Israel defense planning for years. Trump’s claim that the deal to stop payments was made “months ago” suggests the decision was not improvised on Election Day, even if the public announcement was.
Israeli opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot criticized how the change was handled, saying Israel’s defense establishment learned about the shift through the media at the same time as the public.
“The fact that Israel’s defense establishment is learning of a shift in our strategic relationship through the media, at the same time as the Israeli public, shows just how dangerous Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct is,” Eisenkot said in a statement. “He can no longer be trusted and must be replaced”.
Netanyahu has previously said he wants Israel to reduce its dependence on American military support and build up its own defense production. Trump’s announcement, whether coordinated or not, pushes that idea into the open.
A Joke That Fit the Moment
Election Day phone calls to Fox & Friends are a Trump tradition. They are informal, freewheeling, and designed to reach his core supporters without the filter of a formal press conference. The Israel prime minister line fit that format perfectly. It was short, memorable, and provocative enough to travel across social media within minutes.
The comment also arrived at a moment when Israeli politics were already unsettled. In May 2026, Trump made a similar joke about running for prime minister just as Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, was moving toward early elections that could threaten Netanyahu’s hold on power. That earlier remark came with a claim of “a poll this morning” showing 99% support, again without any public evidence.
By November 2026, the political circumstances had shifted, but the joke had not. Trump reused the same number, the same hypothetical move, and the same confident delivery. The repetition suggests the line is less about Israel’s actual opinion polls and more about the image Trump wants to project: a leader so popular that he could win anywhere, even in a country where he is not a citizen and does not speak the language.
The Numbers Behind the Noise
For readers trying to separate the joke from the facts, here is what is confirmed and what is not.
- Confirmed: Trump made the remark during a Fox & Friends phone interview on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
- Confirmed: He claimed a 99% approval rating in Israel and said he would move there and become prime minister if Americans got tired of him.
- Confirmed: He announced that the US would stop roughly $4 billion in annual aid to Israel by the end of 2026.
- Confirmed: The existing aid agreement provides about $3.8 billion annually through 2028, signed in 2016 under Obama.
- Not confirmed: Any independent poll showing Trump at 99% approval in Israel. No such survey was cited by Trump or by the outlets that covered the remark.
- Not confirmed: The exact mechanism for ending the aid, which would likely require congressional involvement, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
The joke also came on the same day Republicans were defending narrow majorities in Congress. The House stood at 219-214 in favor of Republicans, while the Senate was 53-47. Democrats needed a net gain of just four House seats and four Senate seats to take control of both chambers. A Trump joke about moving to Israel was never going to change those numbers, but it did give cable news and social media something to talk about besides the vote count.
What Trump Said About Iran and His Approval
Trump linked his Israel popularity directly to his administration’s military posture toward Iran. He described Iran as “an unstoppable force” before his actions and said the US “knocked the hell out of them”. That claim about Iran has been a recurring theme in Trump’s public remarks, and he used it on Election Day as the explanation for why Israelis supposedly support him at near-unanimous levels.
“I have the highest approval rating of anybody in history because I’ve been … we stopped Iran,” Trump said.
No historical approval data was provided to support the “highest in history” claim. Presidents are typically measured by domestic approval polls, and Trump’s own US numbers have fluctuated during his second term. The 32% figure reported by TMZ, while unverified by a named poll, is far below the 99% he claimed for Israel.
The Bottom Line on a Headline-Making Morning
Trump’s Fox & Friends appearance was supposed to be a get-out-the-vote message. It became a reminder that Trump rarely sticks to a script. The prime minister joke was not a policy proposal, and no one in the room treated it as one. But it was memorable, shareable, and exactly the kind of comment that keeps Trump in the news cycle even on a day when the focus is supposed to be on ballots.
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The aid announcement was the substantive part of the interview. The joke was the part that traveled. Together, they captured Trump’s approach to communication: mix a real policy shift with a line that makes people stop scrolling. Whether the 99% number is real or not, the joke worked as intended — it got people talking.
Also Read: Mehdi Hasan Doubts Trump’s $3.8 Billion Israel Aid Claim: ‘I’ll Believe This When I See It’
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