In a tweet, the Texas senator described Biden’s rebuke as “Utterly disgraceful. Biden gleefully hosts anti-American radicals like Lula, while shunning close American allies like Netanyahu. It’s clear that Biden and his officials are high from funding what they believe to be successful anti-government protests in Israel.”

“These accusations are completely false,” a State Department spokesperson said about the theories, which first emerged on right-wing U.S. media outlets but were propagated by Netanyahu’s inner circle in briefings to journalists on trips abroad.

“[Israel‘s Movement for Quality Government] received a modest grant from the State Department that was initiated during the previous administration,” the spokesperson noted, adding that “the last disbursal of funds came in September of 2022, well before the last Israeli election.”