By Howard Goller
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump, in a speech to Israel’s parliament, spotlighted mega-donor Miriam Adelson’s outsized influence on U.S. policy toward Israel, recalling her frequent White House visits with her late husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, assembled the world’s largest casino empire as head of Las Vegas Sands Corp and put much of his fortune into nurturing conservative politicians and policies in the United States and Israel.
Both Adelsons have been known for their philanthropy and business ventures in Israel and donations to Jewish causes.
She loves Israel,” Trump told the Knesset on Monday, crediting the couple with shaping decisions like his 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his 2018 move of the U.S. embassy to the holy city, and his 2019 endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights.
Gesturing to Adelson, an Israeli-born physician and a major donor to his presidential campaigns, Trump said, “Stand up, Miriam,” before recounting how the Adelsons would regularly call and visit him in the Oval Office.
He joked that her husband was so persistent he’d “come in through the window,” underscoring the couple’s extraordinary access and impact on his administration.
With a grin, Trump said, “She’s got $60 billion in the bank,” then added, “I think she is saying, ‘No, more,’” drawing laughter. He praised her as a wonderful woman whose devotion was so deep, she once refused to say which she loved more – Israel or the United States.
A senior U.S. official said Miriam Adelson had played a behind-the-scenes role in urging the president to keep striving for the return of hostages that Hamas abducted from Israel to Gaza in 2023. The last of the survivors returned on Monday.
In 2018 Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson, citing her as having championed addiction research, founded medical centres with her late husband and helped launch the Adelson Medical Research Foundation.
(Reporting by Howard Goller in New York; additional reporting by Steve Holland in Washington; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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