GOP Pollster McLaughlin: Obama, Allies Heavily Involved in Anti-Netanyahu Vote

President Barack Obama and his allies were far more heavily involved in the effort to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tuesday's elections, Republican pollster John McLaughlin says.

Appearing Sunday on "The Cats Roundtable" on AM 970 in New York,  McLaughlin cited several examples, including "trying to organize the [Israeli] Arabs into one party and teach them about voter turnout, etc."

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McLaughlin told host John Catsimatidis that some of the money included taxpayer dollars. Former Obama campaign operative Jeremy Bird took part in the Victory 15 effort to defeat Netanyahu, and a Senate panel is looking into allegations that U.S. taxpayer dollars were provided by the State Department to One Voice, which then moved the funds to Victory 15.

Further, McLaughlin said, “The State Department people in the end of January, early February, expedited visas for [Israeli] Arab leaders to come to the United States to learn how to vote … There were people in the United States that were organizing them to vote in one party so they would help the left-of-center candidate, [Isaac] Herzog, that the Obama administration favored."

McLaughlin was in Israel working on the effort to re-elect Netanyahu and secure seats for the conservative Likud Party in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

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