Inviting foreigners to intervene in US elections via @NYPost

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer must’ve figured he was throwing a hanging curveball to Jordan’s King Abdullah the other day. 

“What’s your reaction to Donald Trump saying there should be a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the United States?” he asked during an on-air interview. 

The king neatly side-stepped, talking movingly of Jordan’s own refugee crisis and the need to provide a haven while ensuring that security vetting is adequate. 

But that’s not what Blitzer was after, so he tried again. To which Abdullah replied: “You’re into an election cycle, so I don’t think it’s fair for you to ask a foreign leader to express his opinion on candidates in your country running for election.” 

Dead right. Yet it’s interesting to watch Blitzer practically begging the king to Trump-bash — when Benjamin Netanyahu was held to an entirely different standard. 

The Israeli leader faced accusations he’d tried to influence votes for Mitt Romney in 2012. Joe Klein in Time called it “outrageous . . . an unprecedented attempt by a putative American ally to influence a US presidential campaign.” 

The New Yorker’s David Remnick said Netanyahu seemed “determined . . . to alienate the president of the United States and . . . to make himself a factor” in the election. 

Of course, the reaction was entirely different when Netanyahu was on the receiving end of political meddling. 

In 1996, President Bill Clinton staged a photo op with Netanyahu’s opponent, Shimon Peres, less than a month before the election. (Bibi won.) As Clinton aide Aaron David Miller said, “We wanted Shimon Peres to win.” 

Three years later, the Clinton White House engaged in “snub diplomacy,” refusing a meeting with Netanyahu during a tight race with Ehud Barak, who won. 

Last year, noted Miller, Barack Obama sent “unmistakable signals” that he wanted Netanyahu to lose the national election. 

And back in 1992, George H.W. Bush held up loan guarantees to Israel during an election to protest Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s settlement policy, contributing to Shamir’s defeat by Yitzhak Rabin. 

We don’t recall any media outrage then. 

So apparently there’s good meddling and bad meddling. Bash a Republican or hurt a right-wing Israeli — great. But a conservative Israeli criticizing an American liberal is very, very bad. 

It all depends on who’s doing the meddling — and who’s being meddled with.