A long and bitter journey for Israel since Oct. 7

17 June 2026 at 19:32

This is the June 17, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox every Monday through Friday.

HERO OF THE DAY

Lionel Messi — the man, the myth, the legend — en route to a hat trick as Argentina defeated Algeria 3-0 yesterday in the 38-year-old’s sixth World Cup.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“If they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head.”

— President Donald Trump on the draft deal with Iran

JOE’S NOTE

Last year, Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump he was “the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House.”

A year later, not so much.

“Without me, there would be no Israel.”

“I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

“He has no fucking judgment,” Netanyahu’s best bud said of him.

Strong supporters of Israel have a right to feel betrayed.

It has been a long and bitter journey for Israel and its Arab neighbors since Oct. 7, when more Jews were killed than on any other day since the Holocaust.

Israelis supported Netanyahu’s brutal policies after that slaughter because of the horrors Hamas unleashed on Israel’s sons and daughters. And they continued backing Netanyahu despite his active role in funding the Palestinian terrorist organization in the years leading up to Oct. 7.

So here we are after three years of unrelenting attacks against Hamas, Hezbollah, and neighboring Arab countries. And a few short months after Netanyahu foolishly pushed Donald Trump into invading Iran.

So what has three years of bloodshed brought Israel?

Tragically, a stronger Iran and a more isolated Israel.

The leaked memorandum of understanding proposes a $300 billion reconstruction fund for the Iranian terror state — all guaranteed by the United States.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran will also receive $100 billion from across the globe in the form of previously frozen funds.

And the leaked MOU draft demands that the U.S. lift all sanctions against the Islamic Republic, while the country’s nuclear program remains status quo.

As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I warned earlier this year that Netanyahu’s maximalist policies have caused horrific human suffering and a generational collapse of U.S. backing for Israel.

Popular support for the Jewish state has plummeted to its lowest point since 1948, with both Democrats and Republicans abandoning Israel in large part because of Netanyahu’s extremism.

Israelis cannot feel secure this morning. They have been abandoned by the “greatest friend Israel ever had,” and have felt the blowback from their prime minister’s radical and ahistoric policies.

Sadly, this tragedy was all too predictable.

CHART OF THE DAY

ON THIS DATE

On June 17, 1885, the French steamer Isère pulled into New York Harbor with a famous passenger: the Statue of Liberty, disassembled into 350 pieces. The captain telegraphed ashore: “Isere, carrying statue. Waiting instructions to remove.” The reply: “A thousand welcomes.”

Partial inscription describing her torch:

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.

WHAT THEY SAID

DAVID FRENCH ON THE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING

“The United States Senate should weigh in here, but what happens if they say no to this deal? Does a very unpopular war restart? Do negotiations restart? We were led into this war without these questions asked and answered. There is no real Plan B here at all.”

MIKE BARNICLE ON AMERICA’S 250TH
“On the eve of America’s 250th, the greatest nation on Earth succumbed to the whims and the enormous ego of a sitting president who is now hiding the homework on a deal that supposedly will calm the Middle East forever. It’s not going to. It’s a sad story.”

MARA GAY ON THE OBAMA COALITION

“The coalition of Americans that Barack Obama brought together still exists. Those Americans believe deeply in multiracial democracy. They don’t want to see his legacy confined to a building — they want to see it alive this November.”

TRUMP IN DEFEAT

By Jonathan Lemire

People on the Hill are asking a lot of tough questions about President Trump’s MOU. Trump is going to face those questions, and he is going to try to bluster and spin past them.

But, as I wrote in The Atlantic this morning, Trump lost this war. The United States leaves it having become weaker economically, strategically, militarily, and for Trump, it may foreshadow his eventual lame duck status. Leaders of the world are beginning to defy him: Europe supporting Ukraine, China refusing to give him a trade deal, and now Iran getting the best of him in this agreement. This is a war in which Trump achieved none of his goals. He’s now walked away from most of them.

Read more in The Atlantic.

EXTRA HOT TEA

100

— The number of kegs of Guinness, in addition to 80 kegs of Tennent’s, that two Boston bars went through as Scottish soccer fans took over the city for the World Cup. The sales tripled those of St. Patrick’s Day, the bars said.