I’m not fan of Netanyahu but I think he is orders of magnitude smarter than Trump will ever be. However, I think Bibi has made the mistake of thinking that Trump being easy to manipulate is something that can be exploited in the long run. Yes, flattery will get you everywhere with Trump but it does have diminishing returns over time. Trump’s narcissism will eventually kick in and he’ll start messing with his “allies” just to establish dominance.
Since Bibi nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize and Trump didn’t get it, Trump can certainly figure out a way to make that into Bibi’s fault. And someone might eventually tell Trump that when Bibi dubbed him an “out-of-the-box thinker” he meant dumbass and purposefully said it in a way a dumbass wouldn’t understand. Trump has a memory like an elephant when it comes to people laughing about him behind his back. If Trump catches a whiff of this from Netanyahu, there will be no repairing that relationship, ever. After all, when it comes to Trump’s name in gold letters on hotels in the Gaza strip, Netanyahu isn’t a necessary part of the equation.
The way I’ve heard it described in the past is that he’s very easy to manipulate in the moment, and tends to buy whatever the last person he talked to said. But, he always swings back to his baseline beliefs and attitudes (aka, bigoted malignant narcissism) some time afterwards.
So long term, he’s very hard to manipulate. Not because he’s smart, but because he’s inflexible.