How the Trump administration could be hurting Israel’s already damaged brand | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump joined with Israel to launch the Iran war at an inauspicious time for the US-Israeli relationship. Just a day before the first strikes, Gallup polling had shown Americans’ views of Israel hitting a 21st century low; most strikingly, Americans for the first time didn’t sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians. Making matters even more fraught, the right has in recent months become riven over how to deal with what many regard as a troubling rise in antisemitism in its base and influencer class. Some of the biggest names in conservative thought have increasingly — and often conspiratorially — linked Israel to all manner of American maladies. Given Americans seemed quite skeptical of this war from the jump, it didn’t take an active imagination to surmise that some people would blame Israel and even craft conspiracy theories about that. And that’s certainly happened. But, in a twist, that’s thanks in large part to some of the Trump administration’s rhetoric about the war. The president and those around him have done Israel no favors with some of their claims. On two major occasions now, the administration has gestured at Israel being mostly