Casino magnate and unabashed patron of Bibi Netanyahu Sheldon Adelson said he supports Donald Trump in his quest for the highest office in the land, on the same day, Thursday, when Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said he does not endorse the presumptive Republican nominee. Adelson told reporters he had spoken to Trump recently, and he thinks that the candidate “will be good for Israel.”
Adelson, who invested at least $100 million in the 2012 election, starting ahead of the primaries (he backed Newt Gingrich), told the NY Times, “Yes, I’m a Republican, he’s a Republican. He’s our nominee. Whoever the nominee would turn out to be, any one of the 17 — he was one of the 17. He won fair and square.”
Speaker Ryan, the most powerful Republican in Congress, told CNN on Thursday, “I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now. And I hope to, and I want to, but I think what is required is that we unify this party.”
Ryan, who is thought by many to be positioning himself for a 2020 run for the White House, also told CNN, “For us to be a successful party, to climb that final hill and win the presidency, we will need a standard-bearer that can unify all Republicans, all conservatives, all wings of our party, and then go to the country with an appealing agenda that can be appealing to independents and disaffected Democrats. And we have work to do one this front, and I think our nominee has to lead in that effort.”
Apparently, as far as Ryan believes, Trump is not that proto-messianic figure.
For his part, Trump said he was “not ready” to support Ryan’s agenda in Congress, which could be a joke or a serious problem, depending on the candidate’s mood.
Both living Republican former presidents, George Bush and George W Bush, said they would not support Trump. There’s a lot of bad blood between the Bushes and Trump, who tortured son and brother Jeb Bush in debate after debate, calling him the “low energy guy.” Former Gov. Mitt Mr Romney and Senator John McCain, the two previous Republican presidential nominees, have stated they would stay away from the convention in Cleveland come July.
Sheldon Adelson’s effort to support Trump is intriguing in light of the fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition, which gets much of its funding from the Jewish billionaire, has announced that its mission this summer would be not so much supporting the top candidate but instead to save Republican hides in election races that could tip Democrat because of Trump’s negative coattails.