Trump Won’t Include 2 Major Friends of Israel in his Cabinet: Pompeo and Haley

Photo Credit: Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, April 29, 2018.

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday on Truth Social, his social media platform, that he would not invite former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to join his new administration. Both Republican politicians are avid friends of Israel.

“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” the president-elect posted.

“I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country,” Trump continued, concluding in all-caps, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Haley challenged Trump for the Republican party’s presidential nomination and was critical of him during her campaign. However, on November 3, two days before the election, last week, she wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Trump Isn’t Perfect, but He’s the Better Choice,” she wrote, “I don’t agree with Mr. Trump 100% of the time. But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call.”

Pompeo was more committed. In early October, he signed a letter from more than 400 national security and foreign policy officials endorsing Trump and condemning the “repeated failures” of the Biden-Harris administration.

“From a world at peace under President Trump, we are closer to a third world war than ever before under the Biden-Harris Administration. With multiple escalating wars around the world, an open border that allows terrorists to flood into the American homeland, and malign actors like China operating unabated, U.S. national security has been profoundly damaged by the failed policies of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden,” the letter stated.

New York Times White House correspondent Zolan Kanno-Youngs suggested on Friday that by excluding Pompeo and Haley, Trump signaled his rejection of two Republicans who had supported US aid to Ukraine, diverging from his own stance and that of many allies who advocate for reducing American assistance to foreign allies and limiting military engagements abroad.

But by disinviting Pompeo and Haley, Trump is also cutting off two strong supporters of Israel:

During his tenure as secretary of state, under Trump’s guidance, Pompeo moved the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He brokered the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and additional Arab states. Pompeo was one of the staunchest Trump loyalists and supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Nikki Haley was known for her support for Israel, and for Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement, as well as the withdrawal of the US from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

It’s too early to tell whether keeping these two pro-Israel senior officials out of positions of influence may be a sign of a changing Trump policy regarding the Jewish State. But what makes it bad news is the fact the president-elect went out of his way to announce it.