JNS
The former U.S. president and Republican nominee for his old job also urged Jerusalem to "finish up" the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip quickly.
Former President Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for his old job, 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 he would, as president, speed up weapons shipments to the Jewish state, Trump dodged the question, hours after Netanyahu made that ask 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 is 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.
Trump is expecting "bad news" about the hostages, he told Fox News.
"I think you're going to find that one of the reasons that Hamas is not really negotiating very nicely, I think they are saying, 'Wow, they want the hostages back, and we have killed the hostages,'" he said.
"I watched them as they took the hostages in disbelief—again, it would have never happened if I was president—I watched them as they took the hostages," Trump said. "The level of violence and viciousness, the way they pulled that young girl into a car by her hair and threw her like a sack of potatoes, and I don't believe that they're really capable of taking care of all these hostages."
Trump expressed gratitude to Netanyahu, who praised him extensively for his efforts in the Middle East.
"He was very nice to me yesterday. He mentioned me in the speech very nicely, and I appreciated that," Trump said.
‘We look so bad to the world’
The Republican candidate slammed anti-Israel protesters outside the Capitol during Netanyahu's speech on Wednesday afternoon and denounced the rallies as a "disgraceful display."
"We look so bad to the world," Trump said. "Rarely have we seen anything like this, and I think you should get a one-year jail sentence if you do anything to desecrate the American flag. Now, people will say: 'Oh, it's unconstitutional.' Those are stupid people."
"All over the world, Putin and President Xi of China, all over the world they're watching this," Trump added. "Kim Jong Un, he looks at us like we're a bunch of babies. They see that that wouldn't happen in their countries. It's impossible for that to happen in their country."
Earlier this year, Trump made similar remarks on the war against Hamas in an interview with Israel Hayom.
"You have to finish up your war. To finish it up. You gotta get it done," he said at the time. "I am sure you will do that, and we gotta get to peace, we can't have this going on."
Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS last week that he interprets Trump's call to finish the war as a "blank check" for the Israel Defense Forces to destroy the terrorist group completely.
