“I’m a wartime president, he’s a wartime prime minister,” President Donald Trump said in explaining his sometimes-volatile relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left. (Ronen Zvulun – pool – AFP / Getty Images; Mandel Ngan – AFP / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders June 4, 2026 at 4:46pm
A warm enough friendship can survive a few heated words.
That was the gist of President Donald Trump’s dismissal of a widely reported confrontation Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We’ve worked very well together, I like Bibi a lot,” Trump said. “And I’ve worked very well with him.”
WARNING: The following social media post contains vulgar language that some may find offensive.
Trump on Axios report that he told Netanyahu “you’re f*cking crazy”:
“I did…
I was a little bit perturbed at him, constantly fighting with Lebanon….
You know, at some point I said we’re going to stop this.” pic.twitter.com/ycudi3RGyf
— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) June 3, 2026
Trump was speaking to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine on Devine’s podcast “Pod Force One.”
Devine was asking about an account published Monday by the Beltway news outlet Axios that Trump, during a phone conversation with the Israeli leader, had made copious use of the f-word while lambasting Netanyahu for Israel’s military actions in Lebanon.
On Monday, Iran cited Israel’s activity in suspending further participation in talks aimed at ending fighting between U.S. and Iranian forces.
Speaking to Devine, Trump acknowledged, “I was a little bit … perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon.”
“At some point, I said, ‘Bibi, we gotta stop this,” Trump said. “‘We gotta stop it.’”
Still, he appeared to go out of his way to smooth things over — at least publicly.
“I’m a wartime president, he’s a wartime prime minister, very important part of the world,” Trump said. “And I think we’ve done very well. We’ve gotten along well together.”
For his part, according to CNBC, Netanyahu on Wednesday acknowledged that he and Trump had “tactical disagreements,” but said the two remained united in perceiving Iran as an enemy that should never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
CNBC interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Interviewer asks him about the tense conversation between him and Trump.
“We have so many agreements. We agree on the main things. We want to get Iran, the nuclear program in Iran, finished.” pic.twitter.com/DPAJIEt1D8
— Jeff Charles, Asker of Questions🏴 (@jeffcharlesjr) June 3, 2026
“We can disagree in the morning, and by the afternoon we have common action,” he said.
He also predicted the downfall of the regime, according to CNBC, but said the timing remained to be seen.
“You can’t quite predict when a regime like that goes under,” Netanyahu said, CNBC reported.
“You didn’t predict it in a number of cases: Not in Romania, and not in the fall of the Berlin Wall, and nobody predicted it, but it happened. Why? Because the cracks were propagating underneath.
“In fact, you have enormous cracks right now in Iran, and you can’t predict when it’ll happen,” he said.
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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
