On THE ROSENBERG REPORT, US Amb Huckabee on Israel's Trump fatigue: 'Look at what he's done, not what he's said'

Even as he touted historic progress on the U.S.-Israel relationship, Ambassador Mike Huckabee spent a good portion of his conversation with All Israel News Editor-in-Chief and host of The Rosenberg Report, Joel Rosenberg, addressing an uncomfortable trend: President Trump's approval ratings inside Israel have fallen sharply, dropping from the 70s into what Rosenberg described as a 40-to-50-point decline.

A poll released by the Jewish People Policy Institute on June 23 found that 73 percent of Israelis now view Trump less favorably because of the emerging framework agreement with Iran, and 68 percent said the deal isn't good for Israel.

Huckabee's central defense was consistent throughout the interview: "Look at what President Trump has done, not what he has said," he told Rosenberg – a line he returned to more than once during the conversation. He encouraged people to judge the president by his record rather than his rhetoric.

He began moving through a list of Trump's accomplishments – moving the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, acknowledging Israelis' right to live in Judea and Samaria – as evidence of a relationship he called stronger than "any other country on the planet."

He also pointed to battlefield cooperation during recent military maneuvers, describing joint U.S.-Israeli operations centers where American and Israeli personnel worked "shoulder to shoulder," so integrated that soldiers had to check a colleague's uniform patch to know their nationality.

Still, he acknowledged the president's public statements have rattled Israelis, including a period where, in Huckabee's words, Trump seemed to be "dropping more F-bombs on the prime minister than actual bombs on the enemy."

Huckabee's explanation was partly electoral, noting that both the U.S. and Israel face elections this fall, and he suggested that Trump is perhaps wary of the political costs of appearing to drag out the conflict.

He also pushed back on the idea that a nuclear framework with Iran amounts to abandonment, stressing that the arrangement now under discussion – with roughly 40 of its 60 negotiating days remaining – is a framework for talks, not a signed deal, and that the president has "never wavered" from insisting Iran cannot possess nuclear weapons.

On the subject of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose recent rhetoric has included threats to "take back Jerusalem" and accusations that Israel is committing genocide under a "Nazi" prime minister, Huckabee was forthcoming about his own unease.

Speaking as the interview coincided with Trump's meeting with Erdogan in Ankara, Huckabee noted the president has a pattern of praising strong leaders such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, without that necessarily indicating trust.

"Does that mean that he completely trusts them... I don't know," he said, adding that he personally has concerns "sitting in this neighborhood" as an American living in the Middle East.

Huckabee suggested Washington may be probing Erdogan's true intentions before deciding how to proceed on sensitive issues like F-35 fighter jet sales to Turkey.

The ambassador's closing message to skeptical Israelis centered on patience. The president "plays a long game, not a short game," he said, urging people not to read short-term rhetorical friction as a fracture in a relationship he insists remains, on the whole, at its strongest point in Israel's eight-decade history.