Was Netanyahu recorded saying, “America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry”?

Claim:

Netanyahu said in 1990: “America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it piece by piece until there is nothing left but the largest welfare state in the world that we ourselves create and manage.”

Judgement:

In September 2024, a rumor surfaced online claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was once secretly recorded in a Jerusalem bar saying, “America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world’s largest welfare state that we will create and control… This is what we do to countries we hate. We destroy them very slowly.”

The alleged quote was not new and had surfaced repeatedly since 2017, both on X and Reddit.

Netanyahu: America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it piece by piece until there is nothing left but the largest welfare state in the world that we will create and control. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly.
byu/LightBringerFlex conspiracy

The statement was said to have been made by Netanyahu in 1990, although he did not become prime minister until 1996. Here is the full quote attributed to Netanyahu, as it has appeared in other social media posts:

If we get caught, they will simply replace us with people of the same caliber. So no matter what you do, America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the largest welfare state in the world that we will create and control. Why? Because it is God’s will and America is big enough to take the hit so we can do it over and over and over again. This is what we do to countries we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer because they refuse to be our slaves.

This text goes with the quote in memes like above:

The meme cites “Gordon Duff, Veterans Today” as its source. Veterans Today is a website we’ve found before that publishes anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, and Holocaust-denying material. Vice called Veterans Today “conspiracy-oriented.”

Duff, the editor-in-chief and director of Veterans Today, stated in a 2012 interview that “about 30% of what’s on Veterans Today is patently false. About 40% of what I write is at least intentionally, partially false, because if I didn’t write false information, I wouldn’t be alive.”

Veterans Today has a disclaimer that reads as follows (archived here):

The first link (archived here) takes us to a page written in 2015 by James Preston, who claims to be a social psychologist with a Ph.D. The second link doesn’t work, either because the page has been removed or because the URL is incomplete.

(Image via Veterans Today)

The article itself claims that Netanyahu is the “operational head of the Khazarian mafia” (an anti-Semitic trope) and that the statement was recorded when he met at Fink’s Bar in Jerusalem, a real bar that closed in 2005. While the article claims the quote is taken from the transcript of a recording, no such recording has ever been presented as evidence.

(Veterans Today)

In short, while Veterans Today claimed that this quote was “100% fully authenticated,” we found no corroborating evidence to support this claim, nor any evidence that the quote even existed prior to the 2015 article in which it was published. Additionally, Veterans Today has a reputation for spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. For this reason, we rate this claim as “Unfounded.”

Sources