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Republican presidential hopefuls sounded off on President Joe Biden over the weekend, casting blame on his administration for creating conditions that allowed the terrorist group Hamas to launch a devastating surprise attack on Israel that killed more than 700 people.
“Joe Biden’s ineptitude, weakness, and incompetence has led to this horrible attack on Israel, and it will only get worse,” GOP primary front-runner former President Donald Trump said, adding that the assault never would have happened if he was president. “Zero chance.”
“Just four years ago we had the signing of the historic Abraham Accords, and today we have an attack on Israel,” he said. “What a difference a President makes!”
The Abraham Accords are bilateral agreements on Arab-Israeli relations, which were signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020. The agreements were mediated by the U.S. and signed at the White House during the Trump administration. As part of the agreement, both the UAE and Bahrain recognized Israel’s sovereignty, which marked the first instance of Israel establishing diplomatic relations with an Arab country since 1994.
Trump attempted to cast blame directly on Biden for funding the attack with taxpayer money, claiming that a recent deal that secured the release of five Americans detained in Iran helped to finance the assault. As part of that deal, the U.S. moved $6 billion in Iranian funds previously held in a restricted bank account in South Korea to a restricted bank account in Qatar to allow Iran to draw from the account for a narrow category of humanitarian needs, including food, medicine and medical devices.
Iran has long supported Hamas. Senior members of Hamas said that Iranian security officials helped them plan the attack and gave it their blessing last week. According to the State Department, Iran provides roughly $100 million a year to Palestinian militia groups like Hamas.
The White House National Security Council moved quickly to quash the false claim that the money involved in the release of detained Americans in Iran funded the attack, a connection drawn by other GOP primary candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said on the campaign trail in Iowa that the Biden administration is “funding Hamas and Hezbollah in big ways.”
“Not a single cent from these funds has been spent, and when it is spent, it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people,” a spokeswoman for the council said in a statement on Saturday. “These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today and this is not the time to spread disinformation.”
DeSantis, whose fledgling campaign has run into money problems that threaten to tank his bid for president, said that beyond the funding involved in the detainee release that the Biden administration hasn’t done a good enough job monitoring Iran.
“Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran has helped to fill their coffers,” DeSantis said, offering no details as to which policies. “Israel is now paying the price for those policies.”
He also blasted Biden for “sleeping on the job.”
“I saw the president’s comments with respect to the attacks on Israel. He said that he was up at 7:30 in the morning, but, you know, this was happening late, late last night into the early morning,” DeSantis said, referring to Biden’s televised address to Americans about the attack on Saturday.
“The president needs to be there answering the call when our top ally in the Middle East is under the gun,” he said. “You can’t be sleeping on the job. You’ve got to get there, you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to engage.”
Notably, DeSantis led a trade delegation to Israel during his first year as governor in 2019. He visited again in April of this year and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to celebrate a sprawling trade mission between Florida and Israel.
“I think that we need to see leadership here,” he said. “We need a very clear voice, we need strong support for the state of Israel.”
Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, who is enjoying a bit of a bump in the polls in the wake of the most recent GOP debate, said the U.S. should support Israel as it seeks to defend itself and go on the offensive.
As it stands, Israel has formally declared war on Hamas, and is staging a major military operation in Gaza, including seemingly nonstop air strikes. More than 400 Palestinians, including many who are not part of the terrorist group Hamas, have died, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Haley said that these events should be a wake up call for the U.S., and she compared America’s southern border with Mexico to Israel’s border with Gaza – seizing on an issue that even Democrats are growing increasingly concerned about.
“We don’t need to wait for another 9/11,” she told NBC’s Kristen Welker during an interview on “Meet the Press.”
“America is incredibly distracted and incredibly divided, and when America’s distracted the world is less safe. And look at what happened to Israel,” Haley said. “They waited for them to be distracted and that’s when your enemies move in. America needs to wake up.”
The Hamas attack caught Israeli defense systems off guard and is being characterized by officials as a catastrophic intelligence failure.
“I have been terribly worried about the fact that Iran has said the easiest way to get into America is through the southern border,” Haley continued. “We have an open border. People are coming through; they’re not being vetted.”
Meanwhile, other Republican primary candidates, including tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, denounced the terrorist attack and pledged support for Israel.
“I am appalled by the barbaric and medieval Hamas attacks,” Ramaswamy said in a statement. “Shooting civilians and kidnapping children are war crimes. Israel’s right to exist & defend itself should never be doubted and Iran-backed Hamas & Hezbollah cannot be allowed to prevail. I stand with Israel and the U.S. should too.”
Scott, who also sought to tie the $6 billion to the attack, called on Congress to provide swift assistance – though that prospect remains in limbo as House members voted last week to oust Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy from his role as speaker, leaving the body without a leader.
