MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images(TEL AVIV, Israel) — President Donald Trump said on Monday that he “never mentioned” Israel during his controversial Oval Office meeting with Russian officials in which he reportedly disclosed classified information that could have compromised an Israeli intelligence source.
“I never mentioned the word or the name Israel. Never mentioned it during our conversation,” Trump said to reporters ahead of his private meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president was referring to his May 10 meeting at the White House with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov where he reportedly shared intelligence information from Israel about ISIS.
Trump has since defended his disclosure, arguing he has the right to share such information with Russians.
ABC News reported that Trump’s sharing of the information jeopardized exposing an Israeli spy who had provided the intelligence involving an active ISIS plot.
Monday in Israel at the president’s brief public appearance with Netanyahu prior to their private meeting, Trump said he did not mention Israel in his meeting with the Russians.
“They’re all saying I did,” the president said. “So, you had another story wrong.”
In fact, there were no allegations that Trump mentioned the source of the intelligence to the Russian officials.
Trump’s national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who was at the May 10 meeting, said in a press conference last week, “At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed, and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.”
In Monday’s public appearance of Trump with Netanyahu, the Israeli leader showed no signs he was upset about Trump’s disclosure of intelligence.
“The intelligence cooperation is terrific,” Netanyahu said.
Trump’s meeting with the prime minister is just one highlight of his busy schedule since arriving in Israel around noon local time on Monday on what is the second stop on his first foreign trip as president.
Trump also made history Monday in becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter Ivanka Trump.
Trump’s visit to the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, pleased Israeli officials. But in preparations for the planned visit, a junior U.S. official commented to Israelis that the Jewish holy site is “not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank” — a remark that an Israeli official said was “received with shock.”
The president, donning a yarmulke, solemnly placed his hand on the Western Wall and, after taking a few moments, left a note behind.
Before arriving at the Western Wall, Trump and the first lady toured the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City — one of Christianity’s holiest sites, holding the shrine where Jesus is believed to have been entombed. He delivered remarks alongside Rivlin, repeating what he wrote in the Israeli president’s guestbook, saying, “I am honored to be in the great state of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.”
The president and the first lady were greeted upon their arrival to Israel by Netanyahu, his wife, Sarah Netanyahu, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, and his wife, Nehama Rivlin, for a welcome ceremony.
“On my first trip overseas as president, I have come to the sacred and ancient land to reaffirm the unbreakable bond between the United States and the state of Israel,” Trump said Monday morning on the tarmac of Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
“We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and to its people, defeating terrorism and creating a future of harmony, prosperity and peace. But we can only get there working together,” he added.
On Tuesday, Trump will have a private meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and participate in a wreath laying at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.
Trump will not announce during his visit any move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to a senior White House official who cautioned that it’s not the right time for such a pronouncement, as the administration is focusing on brokering a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.
Moving the embassy had been a campaign promise of Trump’s going back to the Republican primary campaign. As early as a March 2016 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump vowed, “We will move the American Embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.”
Most foreign nations’ embassies in Israel, including the United States’ since 1966, are in Tel Aviv. Any move of the embassy to Jerusalem would likely be viewed as provocative to leaders of the region’s Arab nations and to Palestinians, who claim that city as the capital of a future state.
Trump does not expect to convene a joint meeting with Abbas and Netanyahu on this trip, although he hopes that will happen after another round of solo meetings with each of the leaders, the senior White House official said.
“We’re not here to force people to do things one way or the other with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the official said.
The stop in Israel comes after the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, and will be followed by a trip to the Vatican, where Trump will meet with the pope.
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