WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Former President Donald Trump on Monday took aim at his successor in the White House, blaming President Biden for this weekend’s deadly attack by Hamas on Israel.
Trump, in a speech in the crucial early voting state of New Hampshire, claimed that “the atrocities we are witnessing in Israel would never have happened if I was president.”
And the former president, who is running for the White House a third straight time, charged in a campaign trail appearance that “Joe Biden betrayed Israel.”
Trump and many of his rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination have been blasting Biden and his administration since Hamas militants, supported by Iran, on Saturday launched the deadliest attack on Israel in decades. Hamas’ surprise early morning assault on Israel during a major Jewish holiday resulted in over 800 Israelis dead and over a hundred, including the elderly, women and children, abducted and taken back to Palestinian-controlled Gaza as hostages.
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President Biden has repeatedly decried what he calls the “unconscionable” attack by Hamas and has pledged that the U.S. will make sure Israel has “what it needs to defend itself.”
The president on Saturday emphasized that the U.S. “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop. There’s never a justification for terrorist attacks and my administration’s support for Israeli’s security is rock solid and unwavering.’’
But the Republican criticism of the president centers on a recent $6 billion transfer to Iran, a complex deal announced by the Biden administration in September to release five U.S. citizens detained in Iran. Roughly $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets that were being held in South Korea were transferred to an account in Doha, Qatar, as part of the deal to free the hostages.
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The Biden administration has pushed back on GOP criticism by insisting that none of the funds transferred have been spent to date.
But Republicans claim that the deal — and the funds — helped fuel the Hamas assault on Israel.
Trump, in his nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech, reiterated points he first made at a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday in slamming Biden. He repeatedly charged that Biden is an “incompetent president.” And he argued that “less than four years ago, we had peace in the Middle East with the historic Abraham Accords. Today we have an all-out war in Israel, and it’s going to spread very quickly. What a difference a president makes.”
In blaming Biden for the Iranian-supported attack by Hamas on Israel, Trump touted that as president he “reduced the Iranian economy” and “withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the regime, and imposed a strict travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country.”
“Now they’re pouring into our country. They’re pouring into our country. Joe Biden undid it. He ended it all and gave billions and billions of dollars to the world’s top sponsor of terror, tossing Israel to the bloodthirsty terrorists and jihadists,” Trump argued.
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And he vowed that “as president, I will once again stand strongly with the state of Israel, and we will cut off the money to the terrorists on day one.”
The former president addressed supporters at an event in a theater in Wolfeboro, in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. It was Trump’s first visit in two months to the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the Republican presidential nominating calendar.
It was Trump’s first trip back to New Hampshire since headlining an event at Windham’s high school on Aug. 8.
Trump, who is the commanding front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, hasn’t spent nearly as much time in the Granite State compared to his rivals for the GOP nomination.
But Trump retains a large double-digit lead over his Republican rivals in New Hampshire, as well as in Iowa, which leads off the Republican nominating calendar, and South Carolina, the first Southern contest in the primary and caucus schedule.
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When it comes to the all-important ground game efforts in New Hampshire, Trump’s campaign touts that “we are miles ahead of everyone else.”
“We’ve been just hammering it as far as grassroots is concerned,” Steve Stepanek, the Trump campaign’s senior adviser in New Hampshire, told Fox News.
The Trump campaign announced its New Hampshire grassroots leadership team in late June. It included 10 county chairs, four city chairs, and over 200 town chairs.
“We’ve been doing a ton of door knocking, a ton of phone calls,” said Stepanek, who is a former state representative and 2016 Trump campaign co-chair in New Hampshire who went on to chair the state GOP until early this year. “Getting a huge response, especially on the doors.”
The Trump campaign would be expected to brag about efforts in the state that gave the then-first-time candidate his initial victory in the 2016 cycle, boosting him toward the GOP presidential nomination and eventually the White House.
But even a neutral observer sees strength in Trump’s ground game.
Greg Moore, a veteran conservative activist in New Hampshire and longtime state director for Americans for Prosperity, tells Fox News that “there’s no question that Donald Trump has a robust organization here in New Hampshire.”
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