In back-to-back Iowa speeches, former President Donald Trump covered topics ranging from Iran-backed Hamas in Israel to ethanol.
During consecutive speeches in two Iowa cities, former President Donald J. Trump linked President Joe Biden’s foreign policy to Hamas’s terrorist attack on the country.
“Joe Biden betrayed Israel,” President Trump said to a large crowd in Cedar Rapids.
President Trump repeatedly cited the current president’s release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets as part of a prisoner swap with Tehran’s Islamist state. Iran is a critical international sponsor of Hamas, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization.
“I predicted war in Israel immediately after it was announced that Joe Biden gave the $6 billion to Iran,” the former president said, saying that the United States and Israel “need a very strong partnership.”
During an earlier speech at the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, about 57 miles northwest of Cedar Rapids, President Trump said he “would not be at all surprised” if some of that $6 billion helped fund Hamas’s assault on Israel.
In a statement released Oct. 7, President Biden said that “the United States unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza.”
“I can’t comment on 2024 because of the Hatch Act. But I can clarify the facts: Not a single cent from these funds has been spent, and when it is spent, it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people,” Adrienne Watson, the White House National Security Council spokeswoman, wrote on X.
“These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today and this is not the time to spread disinformation,” Ms. Watson added in a follow-up post.
In Cedar Rapids, where he spoke at the DoubleTree by Hilton’s convention center, President Trump took aim at President Biden’s comments on the Hamas attack. He launched into an impression of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill before opining that President Biden “was not Winston Churchill.”
President Trump described the attack as an “act of savagery” in both his Oct. 7 speeches.
By Nathan Worcester
