Kamala Harris refuses to call Israel a 'close ally' one year after Oct. 7
Fox News' Trey Yingst reports the latest on the devastation from the Oct. 7 attack on Israel one year later. The 'Outnumbered' panel also discusses the tragedy as the Israel-Hamas war rages on.
Former President Donald Trump agreed to an interview on the first anniversary of the horrific massacre and mass kidnapping in Israel on October 7, 2023. The focus was primarily on Israel of course, but also on the explosion of antisemitism in the United States.
There were three key exchanges. (The complete transcript is here.)
The first exchange:
HH: Now Mr. President, when we spoke in April, you said to me that Israel needed to win and win quickly. They are winning, but they’re still fighting, and they’re now fighting in Lebanon. Do you think Biden and Harris have been holding back Israel from winning?
DT: I do. I think everything they do is the opposite. In particular, him. Now she’s a dumber person than him, but he has the worst foreign policy of anybody in history, probably. You know what you do with him? I realized it the other day. You could be one of the greatest foreign policy presidents. All you do is listen to what he says and do the opposite. If you’ve done the opposite for 30 years with this poor guy, this poor, pathetic guy, if you’ve done the opposite for 30 years, you would have been successful. But he’s never gotten it right. And you know, I don’t have to go back into the old secretaries of state and all the people that talk about it.
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The second exchange:
HH: If Israel hits [Iran’s] nuclear sites, will you applaud?
DT: Yeah. I dealt with Kim Jong-un. And he has nuclear weapons. And you tend to speak a little bit differently when they have nuclear weapons.
HH: Yes.
DT: Does that make sense to you?
HH: Yes, it does. Well, Nixon met with Mao, who was the greatest murderer of the 20th Century, because they had nukes. He met with Brezhnev.
DT: Right.
HH: I noticed you didn’t meet with Khamenei, and he did not have nukes. Can they be allowed to have nukes?
DT: No, they can’t have nukes. No, they can’t have nukes. Nukes, if you would see the power of these weapons that I renovated and rebuilt at great cost, I rebuilt the whole military. And then, you know, they gave $85 billion of it away to the Taliban and to Afghanistan. Can you imagine? They gave $85 billion dollars away. They gave everything. This is the worst group of people, these are the worst negotiators in history.
Former President Donald Trump addresses the crowd at a rally in Butler, PA on Saturday, October 5, 2024. The rally is in the same location as the one on July 13 at which an assassination attempt was made on Trump's life. (Matthew McDermott for Fox News Digital)
Exchange three:
HH: Let me turn to antisemitism in the United States. Your daughter is Jewish. Some of your grandchildren are Jewish. Your son-in-law is Jewish. Jewish students are not safe on many American campuses. Your alma mater, my alma mater, Biden and Harris have ignored this. I mean, they really have ignored it. If you’re president, will you send the DOJ to those campuses, the office of Civil Rights from the Department of Education to enforce the law?
DT: 100%. I mean, the law is being broken. 100%. You wouldn’t think you’d even have this. Did you ever think two years ago, three years ago, that you’d ever have this discussion?
HH: No, I didn’t.
DT: I’m unbelievable what’s happening. And when you see these riots, and you see a lot of people, too. But you know, a lot of the people in that, a lot of those people are Jewish people. You know that. They’re Jewish kids.
HH: Oh, yeah. There are some outliers, but most Jewish students are afraid to be overt on places like Harvard and Penn.
DT: Yeah, but then you have other Jewish students that are afraid. Yeah, that’s true, and they should be afraid. I never thought I would see this in my life with the campus riots and what they’re saying and what they’re doing. And they have to put them down quickly. They really have to put them down quickly.
Some pro-Israel Americans would prefer that zero attention be given to the outliers, but as the excellent Commentary Magazine podcast occasionally mentions the insidiousness of Jewish Americans attacking Israel and defending, implicitly or even explicitly, Hamas, then it should not be shocking when the former president notices it too.
I highlight these three exchanges because the result in November’s election will reverberate around the world but most especially in Israel.
US ON ALERT FOR POSSIBLE ‘VIOLENT EXTREMIST ACTIVITY’ ON AMERICANS ONE YEAR AFTER OCT. 7
It seems clear to me that a President Kamala Harris will be the least supportive American president of the Jewish State in Israel’s 76-year history.
By contrast, the argument is solid that Trump in his first term was at least the equal of any previous president when it comes to a record of support for Israel in peacetime. (Richard Nixon ordering the Pentagon to "send everything that can fly" to Israel in an arms resupply during the 1973 Yom Kippur War is the sole example of when an American president stepped up at a moment of existential peril to Israel and does everything to help it short of sending American forces. Trump did not face such a choice in his first term, but might very well in a second if Iran crosses the nuclear threshold.)
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The choice should be clear for any American who supports Israel and for whom the continued existence and vibrancy of the Jewish State and the Middle East writ large is a priority: They should vote for Trump.
Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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