This cartoon by the prominent Israeli cartoonist Amos Biderman is perfect for Father’s Day: Netanyahu asks Trump the key question Isaac asks Abraham in Genesis: “But where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Bibi is unaware that he is about to become the sacrificial lamb, or more accurately, the scapegoat for the failures that both of them should own. It’s a low point for fatherhood and a low point for trust. The two of them, for so long stars of the popular buddy series, The Untrustrables, look like they are headed for cancellation at season’s end, when elections fall. But the damage they’ve caused, to so many lives, to democracy and to trust itself, is incalculable.
This is the ultimate biblical example of a father’s betrayal of trust. It’s not the father I’ve tried to be. But on the geopolitical level, it tells the story of this era, and especially this war. And the betrayals perpetrated by Trump and Netanyahu only exacerbate the aura of mistrust that has infected us all.
Mistrust is everywhere and we are desperate to fend it off, which explains for me an upsurge in popularity of books emphasizing simple human kindness, like the number one bestseller Theo of Golden, which I just completed and highly recommend. Some call it “slow, boring and repetitive.” I call it a godsend. We need to restore trust in any manner possible.
“An Abundance of Caution”
On Friday, I hit a low point in trust, which led me to conclude that I had betrayed yours. Spoiler alert: Everything turned out OK. Neither you nor I were scammed.
Here’s what happened:
When I was contacted by the director of a new website promoting Jewish life, I welcomed her request to adapt one of my essays for her Shabbat newsletter. We went back and forth a few times so I felt confident that I was dealing with a real person and a real site. When I tried a rudimentary Google search, the site didn’t appear, but I made little of it because it is new. I subscribed to the newsletter. On Friday afternoon the director contacted me and said the page was live and my article was there, and she invited me to share the link. The link worked. So I sent it out to you.
The problem was, even though I had subscribed to her new newsletter, it did not appear in my inbox. So I Googled both the site and the person, and nothing definitive showed up. And, unsolicited, Google’s A.I. gave me the foreboding advice that the domain is “highly suspicious and likely a scam.”
Naturally, I trusted A.I. rather than the several real interactions I had had with this woman and immediately shot off my second email to you, my warning of a possible scam. The last thing I would want to do is betray the trust of my subscribers. So much of our relationship is based on trust. I learned that lesson long ago as rabbi of a brick-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood congregation, and I’ve come to see that, in the Substack community as well, trust is everything.
Integrity is and has always been my most precious asset. But now I was putting it at risk.
I had some suspicion that I was the victim of an elaborate phishing scheme and had unwittingly put you in jeopardy. Phishing has been around for a while, but with the advent of A.I., it is now becoming an epidemic, hitting Americans an estimated 14 times a day.1
I felt like I was becoming a distortion of the famous verse from the New Testament, when Jesus, at the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:19 and Mark 1:17), implores his followers to “Come, follow me... and I will make you fishers of men.”
Was I now to become a “phisher” of men, preying on trust to lure innocent people into an elaborate scheme designed to entrap a rabbi and his electronic flock?
In my rush to contact you before the beginning of the Sabbath and “out of an abundance of caution,” I might have scared the bejeebers out of some of you, and for that I apologize. What I called “an abundance of caution” was precisely that. I was being cautious, it turns out excessively so, because the caution was accompanied by an abundance of paranoia. Having been warned by the supposedly omniscient Google A.I. and having with my own eyes that my subscribing had not led to my receiving any newsletter, I wrote back to the woman, expressing concern. She did not reply to me, and with the sun setting, I needed to decide whether to warn you - and that’s what I did.
With A.I. on the rise and trust in just about everything at an all-time low, my default had switched from “leap of faith” to “NEVER TRUST.” I was wrong. I’ll tell you why in a moment.
The Untrustables
Several months ago, I wrote the following about the Trump administration:
To be less trustworthy than the Soviet Union? That’s a pretty low bar, but Trump has achieved it. He’s let down his staunchest opponents and his greatest allies. He may be the most untrustworthy world leader ever.
Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Miloni, his only remaining friend in the EU, slammed Trump for lying that she “begged” him for a photo. She said:
"Donald Trump’s statements are completely fabricated. I am, quite frankly, stunned… I do not know why the President of the United States behaves in this way towards his own allies. After all, this is not the first time this has happened. I can only say that it is a pity he does not show the same resolve towards the enemies of the West, towards the enemies of the United States, towards leaders with whom he is, in fact, much more accommodating. But there is one thing he must remember: Italy and I never beg."
He couldn’t even tell the truth about a selfie. I bet even Stalin would have been honest about selfies, had they existed back then. There was that time when he did the rabbit ears thing behind FDR at Yalta, but all was forgiven.
Some stuffy historians photoshopped the offending digits out, and there they remained, until ChatGPT and me altered Yalta with just a few simple commands.
Here’s the more famous original:
These days you can’t trust your lying eyes, because those very eyes are indeed lying.
Click here and on the photo below for an amusing A.I. fabrication speculating on a Zelensky-like Churchill visit to the White House in 1940 if Trump had been president, with Winston desperate for arms but “holding none of the cards.” Given how Ukraine has strengthened its position since the visit this parody is mocking, it’s doubly hilarious. A.I. is not all bad.
Donald Trump was untrustable long before social media and digitally altered Yaltas.
And now even his best bud Bibi has learned the lesson. Trump simply took a look at Netanyahu’s popularity in America and decided that it was time to flip the switch and betwray that trust.
Netanyahu’s the one person in the world whose numbers in America are so low that they can actually drag Trump’s numbers down. And so this week, Trump has been lashing out at Bibi nonstop, taunting him online, on the phone, at the G7 and to the press. He is now angling to engineer Bibi’s electoral defeat, which is probably coming anyway, but Trump wants to take credit so he can win points with American voters. A warning to the opposition leaders, and it’s a warning Bibi should have known long ago:
There is no “trust, but verify” with Trump. He and Bibi are both truly The Untrustables. Trust me. You can’t trust a word they say. We can only hope the new season brings new faces to the fore.
My lapse of trust on Friday is something that happens far too often these days and for far too many. Trump and social media have corroded all bonds of trust, to the point where a person reaching out to me for some assistance in getting her startup off the ground was not believed.
She wrote back to me a few hours after my warning to you and everything checked out. A.I. was wrong, even though there was no trace of the site online. I could understand where the warning came from. But I should have understood that for a launching, there couldn’t have been much of an online fingerprint.
Still, why had I not received the newsletter, once I subscribed?
I thought of something. I checked my spam. It was there.
It had come into my spam about a half hour before I sent out my warning email to my Substack list. The newspetter looked really nice. with my article right up front.
I felt a deep shame that I had betrayed her trust in me.
So I guess I actually am a victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome. When it comes to trust, Trump has deranged us all. Trust in the federal government is at an all-time low, according to a Fox news poll released this week. 25 percent of registered voters said they “generally trust” the federal government compared to 74 percent who said they don’t and one percent who were unsure. It hasn’t been over 50 percent since 2002, and the percentage who trust the government has been in the mid-to-low 30s since June of 2013.
A Pew poll confirms that confidence in government is at an all-time low. And so is Americans’ trust in one another, down to 34 percent in 2024 - and that was before Trump 2.0.2
Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith, a leap of trust, and believe in people, even total strangers who randomly enter your life. We need to see what is most human about them and filter away the artificial. As Theo of Golden says, “God gave us faces so we can see each other better.”
Ronald Reagan’s outlook has stood the test of time. Yes, we should verify. But we should always be open to the gift that is trust. Our world needs that, now more than ever.
Phishing now hits Americans 14 times a day, with AI making scams harder to spot (KOMO)
SEATTLE — “Phishing” scams, where cybercriminals impersonate a trusted entity—such as a bank, government agency, or delivery service—are the number one cyber threat faced by most Americans. These email and text messages, which are designed to trick you into providing sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, passwords, or credit card numbers, are blamed for most cyber-enabled crimes, according to the FBI’s 2026 Internet Crime Report.
The sheer volume of the attacks, via email and text messaging, is overwhelming. During the first quarter of 2026, Microsoft Threat Intelligence detected approximately 8.3 billion email-based phishing threats.
Text-message phishing (called “smishing”) is now the primary means of attack, accounting for 30 percent of all observed cyber scams last year, according to the Cyber Readiness Report.
Phishing attacks are no longer limited to email and text messages. Cyber-thieves are using instant messaging apps, social media, malicious advertisements, bogus QR codes, and copycat websites to target their victims.
Trust is down on so many metrics:
Happy Father’s Day. We can all be there if not already as who knows whom or what to trust.
Happy Father’s Day, my friend. I must say your emails just confused me. They didn’t alarm me but I was rather perplexed. I’m glad this story had a happy ending. The older I get, the more cynical I have become. And it’s gotten so that I don’t believe anyone anymore, although I’d like to. I look after my very elderly (95) year old husband and he sees a plethora of different doctors. My confidence in the medical establishment has plummeted! Our primary care doctor is the only doctor I trust. He and I have grown old together. I dread the day he tells me he is retiring. I count on him to help keep Gene from getting tricked by all the “specialists “ he is sent to. I definitely suffer from TDS. It’s changed me from being trusting to not trusting anyone. This past week has been the worst yet! The constant lies are getting impossible to untangle. And this is exactly where this administration wants me, and you, to be. What an unholy mess! It’s a world gone crazy. Sigh. 😐🫥💭
I can relate on the doctor issue. Yes, this has been a confusing week, on a number of levels. Thanks for hanging in there!
Thanks Rabbi. I needed this. Been feeling a little low in spite of attending a joyful Juneteenth Celebration Parade yesterday. A cautious follower.
Thank you for this column - a thoughtful analysis of where we are with trust. It’s a long road, I see, both behind and ahead…. <sigh>
Rabbi, your humility and honesty is not only refreshing but a beacon of light as well. When you sent the “warning email”, I took you at your word because underneath it, I believed that you were doing this out of concern for others. Nothing more. Good to know the full scope of the situation. Keep shining the light!
Thanks. Turns out to have been a comedy of errors. But no one is laughing!
Authoritarian governments have always hidden the truth, and now it has spread to democratic governments such as the US government. Not just Trump telling falsehoods, but his whole administration following his lead. Why do they do this? To sow doubt when the truth actually comes out. When we were teenagers, we would get together and watch Saturday Night Live. One funny skit on their SNL news skit was the "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is not dead" report referring to the contradictory reports from Spain denying that he was dead when he was! Now Trump is holed up at Camp David, and no one knows why. Is he dead? Is he planning a nuclear attack? Is he meeting with Netanyahu? Has he had a stroke? Is he about to resign? When the facts come out, will anyone believe the truth? That is why he lies all the time. The same with Netanyahu and Putin! This creates apathy for voters who have just shut off all the news and any confidence in the government. The largest voting block in the last US presidential election was registered voters who didn't bother to vote! Every failed empire in the last 5 thousand years has failed for similar reasons!
At least someone is telling the whole truth. You! Thanks. Here’s an interesting analysis of the catchphrase from SNL about Franco. Interesting…but I wonder whether this podcast is also A.I. No actual names are referenced when we hear the narrator. It sounds, well, fake. But still a good analysis. https://youtu.be/_A1v0EXq1OU?is=PRh3-QFhR7hBEEYE
When I opened my e-mails at 5am 😵💫 I just merrily clicked on your first message, not reading the subject of the second one at all. Took a while to wake up and read the sequel plus your comment, revising your fears. I learned from this. You have, as always, handled the situation with seriousness and humor. `love your quotes.
Thanks. I wasn’t planning on sending anything out on Father’s Day, but didn't want to wait to send out the clarification - and then that father-related cartoon presented itself.
And thank you for the great one concerning Trump and Netanyahu. But there is always so much one can comment on (and commend) in your Notebooks, hard to keep it short 🙄.