President Donald Trump said the U.S. will no longer providing $4 billion in yearly aid to Israel starting in 2027.

“You can consider it barter. You can consider military aid or cash. Look, we give them $4 billion of things and money, and they don’t need it,” he said in a Fox News interview. “And I was approached by Bibi Netanyahu, and we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years because it’s a lot of money.”

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“They don’t need it,” Trump said. “Israel’s our number one. We give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it.”

“Israel is a very thriving country,” he added.

Trump said the funding had become one of the “points of contention” in the U.S.

“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” Trump said, acknowledging Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s criticism of U.S. funding to Israel.

“I don’t want to fund a foreign military that does genocide, apartheid, or has taken us to a war we don’t need to fight,” El-Sayed told CNN in August.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously said he wants to phase out Israel’s reliance on American aid.

“We’ve come of age, and we’ve developed incredible capacity. And our economy, which will reach, certainly within a decade, will reach about a trillion dollars—it’s not a huge economy, but it’s not a small economy,” he told The Economist in January. “So I want to taper off military aid within the next 10 years.”

Trump said he has discussed ending the funding with Netanyahu for years.

“I was approached by Bibi Netanyahu, and we’ve been talking about it for a couple of years because it’s a lot of money,” he said. “He brought it up. He said, ‘I think it would be appropriate if we do not receive aid.’”

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This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok.