Brian Kilmeade Questions Donald Trump's Plan to End Israel Aid

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade questioned President Donald Trump's plan to end U.S. military aid to Israel on his radio show Tuesday. Hours earlier, Trump had told him on Fox & Friends that the roughly $4 billion a year would stop by the end of 2026.

Kilmeade did it on Election Day, saying Trump was cutting the aid "to not give the Democrats a talking point."

"I have no idea why you would give in to Democrats who wanna cut off aid to Israel, our number one allies in the region," Kilmeade said on The Brian Kilmeade Show.

What Donald Trump Said About Israel Aid

On Fox & Friends, Kilmeade asked Trump whether the U.S. was cutting off aid to Israel. "We were giving them $4 billion. We are, but it gets cut off at the end of the year," Trump said.

"Because they don't need it, Brian," he added. "Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don't need it?" Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan and has called for cutting the aid. Trump also told Fox News that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the idea first and that Israel can still buy American weapons.

On his radio show, Kilmeade said the announcement "really caught me by surprise." He granted that Israel's economy has been strong during the war, but he said cutting the aid was the kind of move he expected from Democrats, not Trump.

"I wouldn't think a Republican president would ever do that," he said. "Hopefully, he was able to clarify a little bit later today."

His objection was to timing. "If he was gonna do something like that for political gain, you should do it before election day," he said. "I'd hate to think that that would help me get elected, doing the wrong thing. So it would be a huge mistake."

The Aid Agreement Runs Through 2028

Kilmeade also floated the possibility that Trump had simply misspoken. He said a text from "someone in the know" told him "the president is wrong," adding: "It's an MOU with Israel ends in two years."

The record supports that account. The current 10-year memorandum of understanding was signed in 2016. It pledges $38 billion from fiscal year 2019 through fiscal year 2028: $33 billion in Foreign Military Financing grants and $5 billion for missile defense, according to the Congressional Research Service. The money still has to be appropriated by Congress every year. Memorandums of understanding are not legally binding, but Congress wrote the annual aid levels into the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2021, ABC News reported. The CRS has said the two governments are negotiating a fourth agreement that could phase the aid out.

Israel's own officials were caught off guard. Israel's Finance Ministry said "no formal document was submitted from the Prime Minister's Office regarding the end of aid," and a senior Defense Ministry official said, "We did not expect this announcement, certainly not today," the Times of Israel reported. Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to ABC News.

Israel's Opposition Pushes Back

Eisenkot is a former Israeli military chief of staff.

Where Voters Stand on Israel Aid

Kilmeade argued that "almost everybody's running on cutting off Israel" among Democrats. El-Sayed wants the aid ended, while Kilmeade said California Representative Ro Khanna wants to "give them a more for the Iron Dome." Israel aid has become a live issue in Michigan, where El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers by 5.2 points in PolitiKool's polling average.

The polling shows why the issue cuts both ways. In a New York Times/Siena poll of 1,507 registered voters conducted in May, 74 percent of Democrats opposed more economic and military support for Israel.

What Happens Next

Kilmeade said Netanyahu had warned about a year ago that Israel would eventually be "on their own" if Democrats took power.