Report: Adelson Backs McMaster After Group He Funds Ran Campaign Against Him
Sheldon Adelson Image by getty images
By Aiden Pink August 14, 2017
Casino magnate and political megadonor Sheldon Adelson has come out in support of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster after right-wing groups — including the Zionist Organization of America, which Adelson funds — campaigned in recent days for McMaster to be fired.
Spokesman Andy Abboud told the political news website Axios on Monday that Adelson “has nothing to do with the ZOA campaign against McMaster. Had no knowledge of it. And has provided zero support, and is perfectly comfortable with the role that McMaster is playing.”
The ZOA published a report last week calling on President Trump to fire McMaster, whom they accused of being anti-Israel. That campaign was criticized by centrist Jewish groups and former Israeli security officials, who claimed that McMaster was in fact a strong supporter of the Jewish state.
Perhaps seeking to quell the anti-McMaster campaign, President Trump issued a statement last week calling McMaster “a good man and very pro-Israel.”
The ZOA, for its part, released a statement on Monday — a few hours before Axios’ Adelson report — in which group president Morton Klein revealed that U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman had urged him to stop the McMaster criticisms. Despite this, Klein doubled down, noting in the same statement that “the strong critics of McMaster are the strongest pro-Israel supporters and the strongest opponents of the Iran deal and Radical Islamic terrorism.”
When interviewed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McMaster repeatedly refused to say that he could productively work with White House Chief Strategist and former Brietbart.com publisher Steve Bannon, whom Klein has publicly supported. Breitbart was exclusively leaked the ZOA’s anti-McMaster document.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
