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embassy to Jerusalem even though earlier administrations - Democratic and Republican - avoided doing do because it directly challenged the Palestinian view that the ancient city should be part of any peace agreement.Īdelson, in turn, aided Trump financially, including $5 million for his inauguration, and supported him through his media holdings. He cut funding for Palestinian refugees and withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear nonproliferation deal with Iran. He gave more than $20 million in the final weeks of the campaign after reports that he would contribute $100 million, and was more generous with congressional races.īut after Trump’s surprise victory, the new president spoke often with Adelson and embraced his hardline views on the Middle East. I agree!” Adelson eventually endorsed Trump, but remained hesitant through much of 2016. Marco Rubio of Florida, tweeting in 2015, “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. Trump even ridiculed his initial liking for Sen.
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“But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”Īdelson came around slowly to Trump, who during the campaign had said he would be “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. “I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” he told Forbes magazine in 2012. He and his wife spent more than $90 million on the 2012 election, funding presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and later Mitt Romney, who also lost to Obama. His leverage grew considerably in 2010 after the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision lifted many restrictions on individual campaign contributions. Bush and backed Republican Rudolph Giuliani for the 2008 presidential race, before turning to the eventual candidate, Sen. He was a supporter of President George W. Through the 1990s and after his wealth soared and his engagement in politics intensified. He didn’t become a casino owner, or a Republican, until well into middle age.
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His attachment to Israel was life-long and so deep that he once said he wished his military service had been in an Israeli uniform instead of an American one.Īdelson was a late bloomer in business and in politics. He sponsored “Birthright” trips to Israel for young Jewish adults that were criticized by some participants as intolerant of opposing views.
In the U.S., Adelson helped underwrite congressional trips to Israel, helped build a new headquarters for the lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and later was a top supporter of the Israeli-American Council, whose conferences have attracted top Republicans (Vice President Mike Pence) and Democrats (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi).
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He was closely aligned with the conservative Likud party and funded a widely-read free daily newspaper called “Israel Hayom,” or “Israel Today,” so supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that some Israelis nicknamed it “Bibi-ton.” He established a think tank in Jerusalem. He donated $25 million, a record sum for a private citizen, to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. When asked at a gambling conference what he hoped his legacy would be, Adelson said it wasn’t his glitzy casinos or hotels, it was his impact in Israel. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were front and center at the ceremony in Jerusalem. The inflammatory move had been adamantly opposed by Palestinians and was long a priority for Adelson, who had even offered to help pay for it, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, of which he was the primary benefactor. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. Throughout, he helped ensure that uncritical support of Israel became a pillar of the GOP platform, never more visibly demonstrated than when the Trump administration relocated the U.S. In 2012, Politico called him “the dominant pioneer of the super PAC era.”Īdelson regularly hosted the party’s top strategists and most ambitious candidates at his modest office, wedged among the casinos on the Strip. Adelson was considered the nation’s most influential GOP donor over the final years of his life, at times setting records for individual contributions during a given election cycle. “If you do things differently, success will follow you like a shadow,” he said during a 2014 talk to the gambling industry in Las Vegas.īlunt yet secretive, the squatly-built Adelson resembled an old-fashioned political boss and stood apart from most American Jews, who for decades have supported Democrats by wide margins.