COMMENTARY: Trump on Israel

Former President Donald Trump gave an exclusive interview to Israel Hayom, Israel’s largest newspaper, providing the most complete accounting to date of his current views on the Middle East democracy and its war against Hamas terrorists. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president this year, gave the interview at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on March 22. He was interviewed by Omer Lachmanovitch, editor-in-chief of Israel Hayom, and Ariel Kahana, Israel Hayom’s senior diplomatic correspondent.

Q: I want to present you with a question I think every world leader has to answer. How would you react if your children or grandchildren were kidnapped by Hamas and underwent the same atrocities many Israelis have experienced since Oct. 7?

Trump: “I would say I would act very much the same way as you did. You would have to be crazy not to. Only a fool would not do that. That was a horrible attack.”

Q: We have seen a major rise in antisemitic attacks since Oct. 7. What are you going to do about it?

Trump: “Well, that’s because you fought back. And I think Israel made a very big mistake. I wanted to call [Israel] and say don’t do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, Oh, that’s a terrible portrait. It’s a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this … every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people. It would say it was given by the Defense Ministry, and said whoever’s providing that that’s a bad image.”

Q: But terrorists are hiding in those buildings.

Trump: “Go and do what you have to do. But you don’t do that. And I think that’s one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn’t see that, every single night I’d watch and every single one of those. … And I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that.’ ”

Q: Sen. Chuck Schumer, just two weeks ago, called Israelis to go to the polls and change the government. And on top of that, we see, I would say daily interference by the administration. What do you think about what Schumer said about Biden’s support, or lack thereof, for Israel?

Trump: “I think it’s a terrible thing to do, because it takes all of your momentum away, because they watch, and they watch the government, they watch the people what’s going on. And it shows great division in the United States, you have to have support. And you don’t have the support you used to have. Some 15 years ago, Israel had the strongest lobby. If you were a politician, you couldn’t say anything bad about Israel, that would be like the end of your political career. Today, it’s almost the opposite. I’ve never seen, you have AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) plus three, these lunatics, frankly. But you have AOC plus three plus plenty of others. And all they do is talk badly about Israel, and they hate Israel, and they hate the Jewish people. And they are open about it. Take a look at some of these, Rashida Tlaib, what she says the way she talks, and they truly hate the Jewish people. And 15 years ago, that would have been unthinkable to be doing that. So Israel has to get, Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations, because right now they’re really, they’re being hurt very badly. I think in a public relations sense.”

Trump harshly attacked Biden over his treatment of Israel.

“It [Oct. 7] was an attack that I blame on Biden because they [Hamas] have no respect for him. He can’t put two sentences together. He can’t talk. He’s a very dumb person. He’s a dumb person. His foreign policy throughout 50 years has been horrible. If you look at people that were in other administrations with him, they saw him as a weak, ineffective president, they [Hamas] would have never done that attack if I were there.”

Trump touted the many historic steps he took as president in 2017-2021 for Israel: The Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab countries, recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and moving the embassy there. According to Trump, “The biggest thing I did was the Iran nuclear deal. I ended it.”

Trump explained that during his presidency, Iran’s economy collapsed due to the sanctions he imposed on it.

“I said to many nations, 47 nations, I spoke to many of them personally, ‘If you buy oil from Iran, you will not do any business in the United States, and we’re going to tariff your products. Every single one of them agreed, I didn’t lose one, not one. Iran did almost no oil business, you know that nobody would buy oil because of me, they were broke, they had no money for Hamas they had no money for Hezbollah, they had no money for anybody. And now they’re sitting with $221 billion in cash. And they control Iraq, which has $300 billion in cash. It’s like a subsidiary, whether you like it or not, it’s like a subsidiary because stupidly, the United States went in and blew everything up … and No. 2 if I was the president, they [Hamas] would have never done that, because they knew there would have been very big consequences.

“That being said, you have to finish up your war. To finish it up. Iran is 35 days away from having a nuclear weapon because of the incompetence of Biden; he is an incompetent president. He’s the worst president our country’s ever had. And it’s so sad when I see what’s happening in Israel and Ukraine and other places.”

Q: What should be done now with Iran, now that they are so close to the bomb?

Trump: “Well, I don’t want to tell you that. Because I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to tell you, but I don’t think you can allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think it’s my position right now to be telling you that but I would tell you this — I was very strong on Iran not having a nuclear weapon to a point where they … literally had no money.”

Q: You have been critical over the years of Jewish Democrats who don’t support you. Perhaps now with the rise of antisemitism and the war, which has made them care more about Israel, you have something new to say that could convince them.

Trump: “I think if you have to convince them, you got a problem because that should be automatic. I’m not Jewish. And yet Israel for me is very important.”

Q: Vice President Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter has tried to raise funds for UNRWA. What do you think about this?

Trump: “How could a Jewish person vote for Kamala Harris? And essentially, you know, that’s what probably is going to happen because you look at this guy [Biden], he can’t walk down a flight of stairs, he can’t walk across a room. He can’t find the exit to a stage without five different sets of stairs. You might have Kamala Harris if this doesn’t work out. Something happens to him and you have her. She supports the enemy, but he supports the enemy, too.”

Trump also made sure to mention his record on Israel while president during the interview.

“I was the best president in the history of Israel. But there’s never been a president and mostly anybody whether it’s a president, nobody did for Israel what I did for Israel, including defense, including billions and billions of dollars a year $4 billion a year for years, when other people wanted to cut it off. But I will say that Israel’s in trouble right now, it’s in trouble. It’s a very troubled place. An attack happened that should have never been allowed to happen, both from the Israeli standpoint and from the United States standpoint. If they respected our president, which they don’t, they have no respect for him whatsoever. That’s why it wouldn’t have happened with me. But I say just be strong. Be smart. And let’s get this over with and when it’s over with, you’re going to be back to having a great life.”

He added that he wished Israel could move beyond the tragedy of Oct. 7.

“Look, I know Israel, very well. Spent a lot of time there. And I have a lot of friends there, tremendous number of friends here. They’re incredible people. It’s an incredible place. You have to finish up what you want this through. We gotta get back to having that country again. The way it was so sad that this could have happened. The date of Oct. 7 is gonna go down … and it bothers me so much when I see people, they don’t talk about the Oct. 7 thing where they talk about how aggressive Israel is. It’s amazing that they’re not talking about Oct. 7. And what we’re going to talk about, they don’t want to talk about it, when I talk about it, people don’t want to hear about it.”

Q: Why don’t they want to hear about it?

Trump: “You have a lot of a lot of people on the outside that are not friendly to Israel, and they’re never going to be friendly to Israel. And you have to be very careful. You’re in a very treacherous neighborhood that’s a little on the dangerous side, but they’re in a very dangerous neighborhood. And with Iran getting a nuclear weapon, once they have a nuclear weapon, you’ll be speaking to them a lot differently than you speaking right now. They would have never had a nuclear weapon with me.”

Q: They will not have a nuclear bomb if you are president?

Trump: “They can have a nuclear weapon in 35 days. I have seven months to go, and nine months to take office. A lot of bad things can happen in that period. That’s a lot. That’s like an eternity. Seven months in this world, and especially in the Middle East, where it’s so and so combative, and so combustible, that’s a long period of time, so many bad things can happen.

“And also, so many good things can happen. If we had a real president, if we had a president that knew what he was doing, who could put two sentences together, that could get solved very quickly.”

The Review-Journal and Israel Hayom are owned by the Adelson family. Dr. Miriam Adelson is publisher of Israel Hayom.