Former U.S. president and Republican nominee also urged Jerusalem to ‘finish up’ the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip ‘quickly’.
JNS
Former President Donald Trump declined to commit to changing U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy of slow-walking weapon shipments to Israel.
Asked on Fox and Friends if as President he would speed up weapons shipments to the Jewish state, Trump dodged the question, just hours after Netanyahu made the demand for such during an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
Instead, Trump focused on Israel finishing the war.
‘I would make sure that it gets over with fast. You have to end this fast,’ he told the Fox News morning show. ‘It can’t continue to go on like this. It’s too long. It’s too much. You gotta get your hostages back.’
Netanyahu told Congress, in his record fourth time for a foreign leader to address the body, that speeding up weapons shipments to Israel could ‘dramatically expedite an end to the war in Gaza.’
Trump urged Israel to ‘finish up’ the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip quickly, ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., scheduled for Friday.
‘He’s coming to see me—I want him to finish up and get it done quickly,’ the former president told Fox and Friends. ‘You gotta get it done quickly because they are getting decimated with this publicity.’
Trump repeated a criticism of Israeli media strategy that he has been making for months.
‘Israel is not very good at public relations, I’ll tell you that,’ Trump told Fox News. ‘Israel, for whatever reason—you have Jewish people out there wearing yarmulkes and they’re, you know, pro-Palestine.’
‘They gotta get this done fast because the world is not taking lightly to it,’ Trump said, again claiming that Hamas’s terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7 ‘would’ve never happened’ under his watch as U.S. president.
‘You have to finish up your war. Finish it up. Get it done,’ he said at the time. ‘I am sure you will do that, and we’ve gotta get to peace, we can’t have this going on and on.’