Sheldon Adelson’s legacy of underwriting American militarism
JANUARY
12, 2021
Written by
Eli Clifton
Donald Trump and
the Republican Party’s biggest single donor, Sheldon Adelson, died at age 87 on
Monday night according to a statement issued by Las Vegas Sands Corp, the
casino company he built. While Adelson is most associated with the flashy
casinos he owns, first in Las Vegas and later in Macau and Singapore, his
lasting impact on U.S. foreign policy — particularly U.S. relations with
Israel, Iran, and China — and the emergence of far-right figureheads Donald
Trump in the United States and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel places Adelson as
one of the most influential and impactful political donors in U.S. history.
Adelson, the son of
a Boston cab driver built a globe-spanning casino empire. His share of that
business was worth $34.9 billion at the time of his death, a fortune Adelson and
his political beneficiaries applied toward his self-avowed priorities of
gaining influence over politicians and steering U.S. foreign policy toward war
with Iran and unconditional support for Israel.
Media coverage of
Adelson rarely discussed his policy motivations, even
while noting his outsized role in contributing to Trump’s election. He and his
widow, Miriam, contributed over $100 million to Super PACs supporting Trump in
2016 and 2020 and, in the 2020 election cycle alone, wrote about $250 million
in checks to support Trump and GOP House and Senate candidates. But Adelson was
a straight shooter who made no bones about what drove his political giving or
what issues were foremost in his mind.
In 2013, Adelson proposed that then-President Obama
should scrap nuclear negotiations with Iran and instead fire a nuclear weapon
into “the middle of the [Iranian] desert.” That nuclear strike, said Adelson,
should be followed up by a nuclear attack on Tehran, a city of 8.6 million
people if Iran didn’t abandon its nuclear program.
And in 2008, the
New Yorker reported Adelson saying, “I really don’t care what
happens to Iran. I am for Israel.”
Adelson, whose
widow is a U.S.-Israel dual national and who continues to practice medicine in
Israel explained the central role of Israel in his philanthropy and “in our
heart” said at a 2010 public event that “the uniform that I
wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform, it was an
American uniform.”
“I’m a one-issue
person. That issue is Israel,” he said in 2017.
Adelson’s
prioritization of Israel was echoed by his political beneficiaries. Newt
Gingrich, who was then running in the 2012 GOP presidential primaries, told NBC’s Ted Koppel that Adelson supported
his campaign because “He knows I’m very pro-Israel. That’s the central value of
his life.”
Then-President
George W. Bush, according to an anecdote repeated by Adelson and reported by the New Yorker in 2008, put his arms
around Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, and told Miriam, “You tell your Prime
Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people because at the end of
the day it’s going to be my policy, not [Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice’s].”
His views on the
Middle East and its ethnic and religious tensions were crude, but he had the
ears of presidents and many House and Senate Republicans whose campaigns he
financed with direct contributions and massive contributions to House and
Senate leadership super PACs that distributed campaign funds to Republican
candidates around the country.
Adelson endorsed
the view that Palestinians are an “invented” people, said “there isn’t a Palestinian alive who
wasn’t raised on a curriculum of hatred and hostility toward the Jews,” and espoused the factually baseless claim that
“not all the Islamists are terrorists but all the terrorists are Islamists.”
And on China,
Adelson reportedly curried favor with the Chinese
leadership and helped secure his initial casino license in Macau by persuading
Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas), then the House majority whip, to shelve a 2001
bipartisan resolution that called for the United States to oppose Beijing’s
Olympics bid due to China’s problematic human rights record.
He further deepened
his ties to Beijing in 2015 when Sands appointed Wilfred Chen, a former member
of the National People’s Congress, the new CEO and President of Sands China,
whose Macau gaming license is up for renewal in 2022.
“Wilfred has a
unique combination of private and public sector experience we think will be invaluable
to the company at this point in our history,” said Adelson.
His influence over
policymakers were remarked upon by then-candidate Donald Trump in 2015 who tweeted that Adelson was going to “give big
dollars to [Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)] because he feels he can mold him into
his perfect little puppet.”
As he closed in on
the nomination, Trump sought Adelson’s endorsement and his financial backing.
Despite Trump’s history of anti-Semitic comments and associations, Adelson
endorsed Trump, who quickly changed course on a number of positions,
vowing to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, move the U.S.
Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and embrace Adelson’s unconditionally
pro-Israel approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Even as Trump’s
support from the alt-right grew, and evidence of strong support from neo-Nazis
and anti-Semites posed challenges during Trump’s presidency, the Adelsons
remained staunch supporters of his administration as it checked off the list of
policies they cared about most: renouncing U.S. participation in the 2015 Iran
nuclear deal and initiating a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran,
moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, slashing aid to Palestinian refugees,
appointing Adelson-favored John Bolton as a national security adviser,
recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, acquiescing in the
construction of more Jewish settlements on the West Bank, among other measures
long sought by Netanyahu, another major beneficiary of the couple’s largesse.
The Adelsons
applauded Trump, who awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam
Adelson, and deplored the failure of most American Jews to support him. (77
percent of American Jews voted for Biden in the November election, according
to a poll commissioned by J Street.)
In 2019, Miriam
took to the pages of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is owned by the
Adelson family, to express frustration with her fellow Jews and lavish praise
on Trump, writing:
By rights, Trump should enjoy sweeping support
among U.S. Jews, just as he does among Israelis. That this has not been the
case (so far — the 2020 election still beckons) is an oddity that will long be
pondered by historians. Scholars of the Bible will no doubt note the heroes,
sages and prophets of antiquity who were similarly spurned by the very people
they came to raise up.
Would
it is too much to pray for a day when the Bible gets a “Book of Trump,” much
like it has a “Book of Esther” celebrating the deliverance of the Jews from
ancient Persia?
Adelson’s final
political act was to ferry Jonathan Pollard — a former U.S. Navy analyst who
spent 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to spying for Israel — to Israel
on one of his private 737s after Pollard’s travel ban was lifted.
Sheldon’s passing
is unlikely to change the direction of the family’s philanthropy. Miriam has
appeared to be committed to the same political causes as her husband. Indeed,
her giving matched — often dollar for dollar in exact, same-sized, six- and
seven-figure contributions — those made simultaneously by Sheldon. She may well
inherit and manage most, if not all of the family’s $34.9 billion fortune.
She can also thus
be expected to help sustain the ultra-hawkish pro-Likud echo chamber, which has
included, among other groups, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Israeli American Council, United Against Nuclear Iran, the Zionist Organization of America, the
couple turbo-charged over the last two decades. They also provided tens of
millions of dollars to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee over the
years but abruptly withdrew their backing in 2007 because of its support in
Congress for an economic aid package for Palestinians.
Adelson was also a
leading actor in the Republican Jewish Coalition, a club of wealthy
pro-Israel megadonors, having served as its chairman for a number of years and
hosting its conventions — which came to be known as “the Adelson primary” for the number of Republican
presidential candidates who attended in hopes of gaining the Adelsons’
endorsement and campaign cash — at his Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
The violent attack
on the Capitol, last week, fueled by Trump’s calls for his supporters to “fight
like hell” to overturn the election results, offered disturbing images of a
Trump supporter wearing a sweatshirt with “Camp Auschwitz” emblazoned on it,
gallows erected in front of the Capitol, and a host of white nationalist
symbols on flags and t-shirts led only a few Trump megadonors — Stephen
Schwarzman and Ronald Lauder — to condemn the violence.
The Adelsons never
issued a statement.
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