The vote count in Arizona has ended, and final results can already be announced in this year’s presidential election: Donald Trump, the former president and leader of the Republican Party, has won all seven key states, which were considered to be the close states by which the election results will be decided (Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada). In doing so, Trump ended up with an electoral tally of 312 out of 538, a better result than he did in the 2016 election, and even more than Biden did in the previous election. As far as the total number of votes is concerned, the count is not yet over (about 4% remain in various states), but it is clear that Trump is the first Republican to win an absolute majority in 20 years. In the Senate, Republicans have won a comfortable majority of at least 52; and in the House, Republicans are on the safe path for a majority of 4-5 delegates—more than enough to advance legislation and policy.
At the same time, Trump has begun building the cabinet that would accompany him in the coming years. Many of the people who accompanied him in his first term are unlikely to participate in the current administration after disloyalty in the eyes of the president elect – including Nikki Haley (formerly the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) and Mike Pompeo (the Defense Minister), good friends of Israel. Israelis will be able to find hope in Alice Stefnik (a member of the House of Representatives, which gained fame a year ago in the cross-examination she conducted with university presidents on campus anti-Semitism) who is expected to be apointed as the United Nations representative, and Marco Rubio (a senator from Florida) in any position in the Cabinet.
One of the biggest questions for Israel lies on the family side that Trump will prioritize: Will the son-in-law, Gerard Kushner, a Jew married to Ivanka (the convert) soon return to the inner circle—or will Trump favor the other son-in-law, Michael Boulos, a Maroni (a Lebanese Christian), who is married to his daughter Tiffany, who was very close to him during the campaign, in a (successful) attempt to divert Arab votes in Trump’s favor? The second situation is also not too likely to harm Israel, especially given the prospect of a close end to the war in Lebanon.
