The two candidates engaged in a heated back-and-forth over the Israel-Hamas War. “If I were president, it would have never started,” Trump began. What she mentions about Israel all of a sudden – she hates Israel! She wouldn’t even meet with Netanyahu when he went to Congress, to make a very important speech. She refused to be there.”
Trump was referring to Harris’s decision to skip Netanyahu’s July 24 address to a joint session of Congress to speak at the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority national convention. The Harris team claimed her engagement with one of the largest historically black Greek-lettered organizations had been scheduled before Netanyahu’s visit was made public.
Trump also made a grim prediction of what the Middle East could look like should Harris win the White House: “If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.” He added, “At the same time, in her own way, she hates the Arab population, because the whole place is going to get blown up – Arabs, Jewish people, Israel, Israel will be gone.”
Trump laid the blame for the outbreak of Middle East conflict on the Biden-Harris administration’s conciliatory approach towards Iran.
“It would have never happened,” the former president said. “Iran was broken under Donald Trump. Now Iran has $300 billion because they took off all the sanctions that I had. Iran had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah or any of the 28 other spheres of terror.”
“They had no money!” Trump exclaimed. “They had no money for terror, they were broke. Now they’re a rich nation, and now, what they’re doing is…spreading that money around. Look at what’s happening with the Houthis and Yemen.”
Moderator Linsey Davis allowed Harris to respond as she saw fit. Harris replied, “That’s absolutely not true. I have my entire career, and life, supported Israel and Israeli people.”
Harris emphasized her support for Israel’s right to defend itself. She promised, “I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
The vice president also spoke of Gaza, saying “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Harris said, “This war must end, it must end immediately and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out.” The vice president did not explain how she would get Hamas to agree to a ceasefire deal to release the hostages.
Neither Trump nor Harris mentioned Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the 23-year-old Israeli American hostage executed by Hamas in a tunnel along with 5 other hostages just hours before the IDF discovered their location.
Trump did not go into detail about how he would confront Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran as president except to argue the war would never have happened on his watch. Harris, for her part, falsely claimed that no US troops were stationed in a combat zone, a claim belied by the combat deaths of 3 American soldiers in a drone attack from Iranian-backed groups on their base in Jordan in April.
