Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried the Biden administration’s “weakness” as having played in Hamas’s deadly assault on Israel last month, warning that further frailty could lead to the crisis expanding “dramatically.”
The former Trump administration official said there is “no logical explanation” for Biden calling for a pause in Israel’s ground operation against Hamas so that aid can be given to Palestinians in Gaza.
BIDEN HECKLED BY RABBI CALLING FOR GAZA CEASEFIRE DURING CAMPAIGN STOP
“If you put America first, you definitely want Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu to do both his duty — that is to destroy Hamas — and to complete that mission in its entirety,” Pompeo told Hannity on Thursday night. “And you don’t need him having a second front here in America. You’re fighting Hamas, and now you’re fighting the Biden administration.”
The former secretary of state’s comments come after President Joe Biden, during a speech in Minnesota, reportedly told a heckler who was calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, “I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.”
Pompeo pushed back on the proposed strategy that Israel should lay down its arms in exchange for the release of the more than 200 hostages Hamas holds, saying it would only exacerbate threats to Israel moving forward.
The one-time Trump Cabinet member, in his dialogue on the Fox News program, added that neither Biden nor current Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday identified the “real problem” in the crisis in the Middle East, “which is Iran.”
Host Sean Hannity then asked Pompeo what the worst-case scenario for the crisis could be, with countries in the region and beyond threatening to get involved.
“There’s enormous risk that this expands; it expands in ways that cause the Arab states to have to check out because they don’t feel like the United States has their back…” Pompeo said.
“The North Koreans have talked about providing weapons systems; we know the Russians are already on the ground in Syria. This could spread not only to the greater Middle East, but you could certainly have not only cyberattacks but cells that are sitting in Europe, cells that may well be in the United States,” he added.
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The Fox News contributor touted his and the Trump administration’s foreign policy work during their time in office, saying there were no European or Middle Eastern wars under their watch.
“The United States’s weakness has provided the context at which Hamas felt like it could do this with absolute impunity, and now you have the American president and Democrat leaders demanding that that very impunity be granted to them,” Pompeo concluded.
