>Has the US ever been easier to manipulate or spy on?
Yes, at least nowadays Israel does not try to sink American warships, killing dozens of sailors in the process and then having the US government to cover it up.
It's pretty absurd to think that Israel would intentionally attack a neutral superpower in the middle of a war for its survival, knowing that at best it would have to apologize and pay reparations, and at worst it would be destroyed by a vastly stronger military.
Friendly fire happens all the time; not everything needs to be a conspiracy.
Can you give an example of a friendly fire on a warship consisting of continuous air and naval attack over the course of two hours? Just one? Friendly fire will suffice, I am not even asking about some other country doing the same to the US.
As for Israel motivation it's pretty obvious why they did it - they wanted to blame the attack on Egypt and involve the US in the war. Though it does not really matter, even you are unable to deny that Israel attacked the US ship, it's an empirical fact.
Screwups happen, and it wasn't only on Israel's side. USS Liberty was way closer to the coast/warzone than it should have been due to missing an order, and once attacked, wasn't able to even communicate with its fleet for quite a while, let alone with Israel.
> they wanted to blame the attack on Egypt
There was no attempt to blame Egypt, and the idea is completely implausible - a US investigation could very easily distinguish an Israeli vs an Egyptian attack when a variety of boats (coming from Israeli ports) and many other assets are involved.
So I figure you could not find an example of friendly fire like that despite your assertion they happen all the time? Color me unsurprised.
>There was no attempt to blame Egypt
Are you an LLM? Of course there was not - the ship survived and there were too many witnesses of Israel doing this, it would be the uber chutzpa to still try to say it was Egypt.
If we assume everything you say here is true, why is the US in such a bind with reopening the straits? The risk of Iran behaving exactly like this has been understood for decades.
The attack was not a a wise, measured move.
We can assume that the conversation didn't went the way that Trump wants us to think.
When somebody annoys Trump, even slightly, he assures to appear on video broadcasted to the whole planet calling infantile expletives to that "ugly" and "incompetent" person. It does not matter if he called "beautiful" and "expert" that same person on the previous hour. As a good narcissist, he will force himself in the middle of the picture every-single-time (and push off the road anybody that would dare to speak for him). Trump is 120% predictable in that sense. Is known to have one of the thinnest skins in the planet and to be easily triggered.
But with Netanyahu curiously we enter in a totally different game, a plausible deniability game of: he-said-that-she-said-that-somebody-has-seen-trump-yelling-on-phone.
Trump must be approved the message but is afraid to emit it personally. Otherwise we should accept the nonsense that such freak of control, the most videotaped man in the planet, became so out-of character that is now allowing leaks, forgiving the whistleblowers, and hiding a video that he personally would absolutely love, LOVE, to show to his fans. A video of him showing dominion assertion over Bibi. The only logical explanation for this save facing move, is that this dominion does not exist and that Israel do what they want.