Some 12 hours after Israel announced that it retrieved and identified the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel under Rafah in Gaza on Saturday night, former President Donald Trump—the Republican nominee for president—commented three times on his Truth Social platform, mixing political attacks on his opponents with mourning for the victims.
“The hostage crisis in Israel is only taking place because Comrade Kamala Harris is weak and ineffective and has no idea what she’s doing,” he wrote, of the U.S. vice president and Democratic nominee, on Sunday afternoon.
“I look forward to seeing her at the debate! Biden failed, and now he spends his day on the beach, plotting and scheming how to take out his once political opponent, me, who took him out both at the debate and otherwise,” Trump wrote. He added in all capitalized letters that “the Oct. 7 Israeli crisis would never have happened if I were president.”
More than two hours later, he issued two more posts mourning the dead.
“We grieve the senseless death of the Israeli hostages, horrifically including a wonderful American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, murdered by Hamas due to a complete lack of American strength and leadership,” the former president wrote.
“Make no mistake—this happened because Comrade Kamala Harris and Crooked Joe Biden are poor leaders. Americans are getting slaughtered overseas, while Kamala is disparaging and making up lies about gold star families, and Biden is sleeping on the beach on this 16th consecutive day of vacation,” Trump added. “They have blood on their hands.”
Harris’s and U.S. President Joe Biden’s “lack of ‘leadership,'” according to Trump, “allows terrorists to take American lives, because they only care about weaponizing the Department of Justice against their political opponent.” (The federal government has filed charges against the former president.)
“Just like the Debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal that claimed 13 American lives, Kamala and Biden’s judgment has not only put lives at risk but is directly responsible for unnecessary deaths that should have never happened,” Trump added. “Our country and our amazing people are not safe under Joe Biden, and will be less safe under Kamala Harris.”
“This terror would have never happened if I were president, and it will stop the day I am back in the Oval Office,” he wrote. “America will be strong again, and that will make the world safe and secure.”
