Donald Trump’s 2024 Collusion Strategy Comes Into Focus

Fool Dems once, can they be fooled again?

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

I awoke Thursday morning to discover that Donald Trump had lashed out at Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of a Wednesday campaign event in Florida. 

For a brief moment it struck me as odd. All week he and the rest of the GOP had been waving the bloody shirt over Hamas’s Saturday massacre in Israel using their typical calumnies. Now, with their leader trashing the country’s beleaguered prime minister, Republicans would have a harder time posing as Israel’s only dependable friend in Washington.

But then I recalled the news I’d tracked in recent days, including Netanyahu’s fulsome praise of Biden, and the mayor of Tel Aviv’s similar expression gratitude, and it hit me: THAT’S what Trump’s mad about. The mere acknowledgement of Biden’s steadfast—I’d call it questionably unquestioning—support for Israel has all but stamped out the MAGA propaganda, limiting its potential to reach and deceive voters who aren’t already part of the cult.

I logged that suspicion here, and Politico’s Jonathan Lemire quickly confirmed it—but the revelation went largely unnoticed. When isn’t Trump lashing out at someone he perceives to be disloyal?

We should ignore the temptation to write this off as another ego-driven Trump outburst and grapple seriously with the implications—what does it mean that Trump thought Netanyahu owed him political favors, even now, and is pissed that they weren’t delivered?

The answer is more sinister than selfishness. 

Consider what Trump thought he might get from Netanyahu (what, for all we know, he or an intermediary may have asked for explicitly): He wanted Bibi, beset by events in his own country, to antagonize the U.S. government. To harm Israel’s vital interests, for the solitary purpose of helping Trump in the presidential election. At the very least, Trump wanted Netanyahu to let horrible slanders go uncontested.

We don’t need to imagine hidden entreaties or favors to think Trump seriously expected Netanyahu to play along. It’s a big part of why he was so solicitous of Netanyahu during his administration. And over four years he compiled a record of one-sidedness that (quite unfortunately) made him a popular and influential figure in Israel. Trump may very well be annoyed by this or that (in his remarks he specifically complained of Netanyahu’s supposed ambivalence over a U.S. drone strike that killed Iran’s top security official, Qassim Soleimani, in 2020). But all of that stuff falls low on Trump’s unwritten ledger of political debts. Loyalty to him comes first. Netanyahu, weakened abruptly by the justified wrath of the Israeli population, didn’t deliver. So Trump, in his pathological vindictiveness, fed him to them.

Whatever Trump imagined Netanyahu might do for him in the midst of a mass national trauma, he revealed something more general. It is not just his hope, it is his expectation, that the whole network of autocrats he placated and toadied to during his presidency and afterward will abuse their offices however they can to help him return to power in 2024.

This is perhaps his most dependable form of corruption. I wanted to say he’s colluded with foreign powers in each of his campaigns and he’s now gearing up to do it again—but the truth is, it’s evolved into a more open-ended, barely concealed set of transactions. The other difference, though, is that Democrats now have the tools and hard knocks they need to do something about it.

The first time around, before colluding became a lifestyle for him, Trump had never been president, and thus had weak relationships with foreign leaders, to the extent he had them at all. He knew through back channels that Russia wanted to help his campaign, and he accepted the offer in clumsy ways—“Russia, if you’re listening…” and Don Jr.’s infamous “if it’s what you say, I love it” email, which only surfaced after it was too late.  

Trump’s brazenness, along with his seeming unelectability, suckered Democrats and the rest of the government into under-reacting. The Obama administration approached the congressional leadership during the campaign seeking a public, bipartisan warning about Russian election interference, but bent to Mitch McConnell who sabotaged the united front and threatened to cry foul if Democrats released the statement on their own. He didn’t mind Trump working in concert with Russia and he definitely didn’t want to sign his name to any public admonition that a GOP campaign was up to something so unpatriotic. 

There’s no use second-guessing that decision seven years later, but it’s worth revisiting before Trump secures the GOP presidential nomination for the third time. Now we know he can win; now we know better.

Biden can intercede against Trump’s collusive schemes in a couple ways: First, by simply warning the public when he learns specific details, without worrying about hypothetical backlash, or about what Mitch McConnell might say or do. The other is to take a firmer hand with Trump-allied foreign leaders insofar as the United States government (as opposed to the GOP or the Trump family) has meaningful leverage over them. There isn’t much he can do at this point to discourage Vladimir Putin from hacking computers and running propaganda operations, but Netanyahu needs U.S. support; the Saudis need U.S. support. And there’s no sense in Biden providing it unreservedly, so long as they intend, when the cameras move on, sell Biden out and side with his opponent in our election. 

It would be a righteous inversion of Trump-style extortion. Trump infamously withheld American support until foreign leaders pledged him favors; Biden could withhold American support until the favor games stopped—and it would be, more than appropriate. It would be entirely within the interests of the United States. Under the circumstances he could wield U.S. power toward multiple virtuous ends: Getting the Saudis and Israelis out of the election-subversion business and salvaging endangered Saudi-Israel diplomacy by pressuring Israel to stop punishing civilians. 

Then there’s the rest of the government. I obviously think Merrick Garland should be willing to act with urgency if investigators find Trump breaking more laws along the way, but I don’t believe he is, and I don’t believe he can be pressured to change tacks. 

And really, that’s not the end of the world, because what this particular kind of corruption needs more than anything is exposure. Not quiet evidence gathering, and a written indictment, consistent with national security and the rules of criminal procedure, but a constant spotlight. It’s a job for congressional committees more than for law enforcement. 

It’s also the right time.

Republicans have hobbled themselves. They’ve all but nullified the House of Representatives, and are too mired in dysfunction to restore order by designating a speaker. Forced to choose between Steve Scalise (“David Duke without the baggage”) and Jim Jordan (the insurrection and sex-abuse cover-up guy), they split almost evenly and rendered both men unelectable. Scalise has already withdrawn from the race.  

When you look beyond the schadenfreude, the situation actually starts to appear a little worrisome. But it also clears the field for a hard-charging public Senate investigation of Trump’s corrupt foreign entanglements and ongoing efforts to obtain illegitimate power. 

We know from both Special Counsel Jack Smith, and recent reporting on his investigation, that Trump has disclosed state secrets to a bunch of people since his presidency ended. But we also know, from former practitioners who have explained it at length, that Smith is limited in what he can allege publicly. His dual mandate is to prove his case against Trump while minimizing further damage to national security. He thus needs to present only as much evidence as is necessary to secure conviction, and ideally it would be evidence of little gravity. Even if he could prove Trump nurtured his foreign relationships by divulging or trading classified information, he might not be free to charge it.

Congress is nothing like this. It can make its own decisions about what the public needs to know, and it can obtain information widely, especially when the executive branch supports its investigative purpose. 

Democratic leaders should grasp this power, because they’ve used it. Trump’s main collusion scheme for 2020 fell apart in 2019 because he got caught, and he probably wouldn’t have been caught, let alone impeached, if Democrats didn’t control the House at the time. Instead of charging into the campaign against Biden fanning hazy allegations of foreign corruption, he stumbled in red handed. His efforts to manufacture foreign dirt on his opponent had been exposed.

Democrats no longer control the House. But they do control the Senate!

Senators could start their investigation with the Trump-Kushner-Saudi business ties, and then widen the aperture to include other episodes of Trump soliciting political favors. They could make it clear to the public that Trump has never stopped cheating. They might even deter Trump’s patrons like the Saudis from inflating gas prices in the weeks before the election. And even if they fail to stop that kind of quid pro quo, they’ll have primed voters to understand, when prices climb or emails get hacked and leaked, that Trump was behind all of it.