Washington (QNN)- President Donald Trump said that pro-Israel billionaire Miriam Adelson offered him $250 million to run for a third term after the Israeli-American Republican mega-donor mentioned “four more years” for him. Trump also said that the “strongest lobby in Washington was Israel” and accused Congress of antisemitism.
At the White House’s Hanukkah reception on Tuesday night, Adelson said she spoke with criminal defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz and discussed the “legal thing about four more years.”
“Alan, I agree with you,” she said before turning to the president, who was standing beside her, and added, “ So, we can do it, think about it.”
Adelson whispered something to Trump, and the president then quipped, “She said, ‘Think about it, I’ll give you another $250 million’.”
The billionaire donor then swiftly responded, “I will give.”
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In his speech at the event, Trump said: “If you go back 10, 12, 15 years ago at the most, the strongest lobby in Washington was the Jewish lobby. It was Israel. That's no longer true.”
The president then claimed, without citing any evidence, that Congress “is becoming antisemitic.”
Since taking office in January, Trump and some of his prominent supporters have pushed the idea of his running for a third term, despite Constitutional term limits on the Presidency. The Trump
According to Forbes, The Trump Organization’s online merchandise store has been selling "Trump 2028" hats since April this year.
Adelson’s total fortune is worth $41.6 billion. This makes her the 42nd richest person in the world on the Real Time Billionaire’s list, Forbes said, adding $111 million is the total amount Adelson donated to pro-Trump super PACs during the 2024 Presidential campaign, making her the Trump campaign’s second biggest financial backer in the election.
Who Are The Adelsons?
Miriam Adelson, a pro-Israel mega-donor, is the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a self-made casino billionaire who died in 2021.
Sheldon Adelson was one of the top Republican Party donors, giving millions to pro-Israel candidates.
Trump often describes how the Adelsons would visit him at the White House during his first term, demanding pro-Israel policies.
At the event on Tuesday, the president praised Sheldon, saying: “Sheldon was an amazing guy, and he’d come up to the office, and there was nobody more aggressive than Sheldon.”
Trump said, “He just wanted to take care of Israel.”
He repeated that assertion in Ocotber while celebrating the Gaza ceasefire after two years of Israeli genocide as he addressed the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.
“Miriam and Sheldon would come into the [Oval] Office. They’d call me. I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else,” Trump said.
The Adelsons have long had significant influence among US conservatives.
As committed Zionists and with links to right-wing figures and issues in the US, the Adelsons became Republican mega-donors in the 2010s, giving more than $600m to support Trump’s three presidential campaigns and to back other Republican candidates since 2015.
Miriam once wrote a column in Israel Hayom – one of Israel’s most widely read newspapers, which she owns – calling for dismissing Israel’s critics across the world.
“Foreign fans of Hamas are our enemies, the ideological enablers in the West of those who would go to any length to eradicate us from the Middle East. And, as such, they should be dead to us,” she said.
The couple pushed Trump to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2016 and to recognise Israeli control over Syria’s occupied Golan Heights during his first term.
Reports emerged last year that she was conditioning her support for the president on allowing Israel to annex the occupied West Bank officially.
In 2018, Trump awarded Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honour.
At a September campaign event, Adelson told Jewish voters they have a “sacred duty” to support Trump, “in gratitude for everything he has done and trust in everything he will yet do”.
She also backed last year’s harsh crackdown on pro-Palestine student protests, calling them “ghastly gatherings of radical Muslim and Black Lives Matter activists, ultra-progressives, and career agitators — nothing short of street parties”.
Miriam is a megadonor to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and her husband faced $34bn lawsuit in 2016 for their support of Israeli settlement expansion.
Many of Trump's nominees for key administration roles have also been nods to Miriam. Trump's choice for US ambassador to Israel is Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who is vehemently pro-Israel and has previously said there is "no such thing" as a Palestinian. In 2013, Huckabee was given the Adelson Defender of Israel Award at a dinner hosted by the Zionist Organisation of America.
Trump's pick for UN ambassador to the UN, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, also received this same award from Miriam in March of this year.
She and her late husband donated around half a billion dollars to the Birthright Foundation, an organisation that takes young Jews from across the world to Israel for free in an attempt to strengthen their connection to the country.
