Cantor Spox Clarifies ‘Check’ Comments GOPer Made To Netanyahu

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)
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Rep. Eric Cantor’s office is clarifying a statement it put out last week about the meeting between Cantor, the likely next House Majority Leader, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Cantor spokesperson Brad Dayspring told The Washington Post that Cantor’s comment to Netanyahu that the new Republican majority in the house ‘will serve as a check on the Administration’ was ‘not in relation to U.S./Israel relations.’

Cantor and Netanyahu met in New York last Wednesday. In a statement describing the meeting Cantor’s office wrote:

Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington. He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.

At the time, Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency argued that he “can’t remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president.” Dayspring had disputed Kampeas’ conclusion last week.

Cantor’s office did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for further comment.

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