NEW YORK (VINnews) — In a speech to more than 3,500 supporters at a Palm Beach, Fla., convention center, Former US president Donald Trump seemed to be chiding Israel for failing to anticipate the weekend Hamas onslaught.
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“You talk about the intelligence or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve got to straighten it out because they’re fighting potentially a very big force. They’re fighting potentially, Iran,” the GOP presidential frontrunner says during a campaign rally in West Palm Beach. “When they have people saying the wrong things, everything they say is being digested by these people because they’re vicious and they’re smart. And boy, are they vicious because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen.”
“They cannot play games,” he continues. “They’ve got to strengthen themselves up.”
Trump makes the comments while recalling his administration’s 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the then-head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force. The former president reiterated his claim that Netanyahu had refused to provide assistance to the US in the killing.
“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing. We were very disappointed, but we did the job ourselves, and it was absolute precision, magnificent, beautiful job,” he says. “Then Bibi tried to take credit for it. That didn’t make me feel too good. But that’s all right.”
Trump painted a rosy picture of an alternate universe he thought would have existed had he been reelected in 2020 instead of President Joe Biden.
“Israel would be flourishing, they would have no problem,” he said. “Iran would have never played that game.”
Instead, he said, the world became full of “chaos, bloodshed, war, terror, death,” and he warned World War III was on the horizon. He called Biden “grossly incompetent” and described members of the Biden administration as “stupid people.”
Trump also boasted about moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and about how he masterminded the 2020 Abraham Accords.
🚨TRUMP criticizes Israeli Intelligence, then says Netanyahu “let [him] down” and he’ll “never forget it,” and tells Israel to “Toughen up” during a speech in West Palm Beach.
DESANTIS responds:
“Someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally,… pic.twitter.com/rl8knE5uIW
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 12, 2023
Trump’s criticisms of Netanyahu drew a sharp response from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is competing with Trump for the GOP nomination. DeSantis posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) that “it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel.”
He added that “As President, I will stand with Israel and treat terrorists like the scum that they are.”
He is 1000% correct. Bibi was a waffler. Look how he’s chanfening Blinken this morning, chanfened Brandon even while the latter shoved billiins to Iran. It’s nauseating.