Donald Trump has confirmed that he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "f***ing crazy" during a heated phone call earlier this week, and denied accusations that he was manipulated by the Israelis into starting a war with Iran.
"He tricked me? I'm the one that started it," Trump told the New York Post in an interview on Wednesday.
"I don't want to bore anybody, but I started [the war with Iran] because we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. Now, that pertains to Israel because they probably would have been the first one to get hit," he added.
"I'll tell you what, if it wasn't for me there would be no Israel right now."
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump confirmed that he snapped at Netanyahu during a heated phone call earlier this week, calling the Israeli leader "stupid" and "unhinged" before telling him: "You're f***ing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your a**. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this."
When asked to clarify if he spoke to Netanyahu in those terms, Trump said: "I did. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon. You know, at some point I said maybe we got to stop this. We got to stop it."
Despite this, Trump insisted he and Netanyahu have a "very good relationship" and that they "work very well together."
"I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him," Trump said. "I'm a wartime president, he's a wartime prime minister… and I think we've done very well. We've gotten along very well together."
Trump also shot down claims made by Democrats that he was manipulated by Netanyahu into starting a war with Iran, dismissing his critics as "Dumbocrats" who want transgender for everybody.
This is a developing story. More updates will follow as information becomes available.
