Former President Trump on Friday said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities while mocking President Biden’s answer earlier this week on the subject.
While speaking at a campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, he said when Biden was asked about Israel attacking Iran, the president answered, ‘’As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you wanna hit, right? I said, ‘I think he’s got that one wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?’’
Trump went on to say that nuclear proliferation is the ‘biggest risk we have.’
The former president said he rebuilt the ‘entire military, jets everything, I built it, including nuclear’ while he was president. ‘I hated to build the nuclear, but I got to know firsthand the power of that stuff, and I’ll tell you what: we have to be totally prepared. We have to be absolutely prepared.’
He said when Biden was asked about Israel and Iran: ‘His answer should have been ”Hit the nuclear first, worry about the rest later.”
Trump made similar comments in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, telling correspondent Bill Melugin Biden’s response on Israel attacking Iran was the ‘craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear.’
He continued, ‘I mean, to make the statement, ‘Please leave their nuclear alone.’ I would tell you that that’s not the right answer. That was the craziest answer because, you know what? Soon, they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.’
Former deputy director of national intelligence Kash Patel, who served under Trump, said this week: ‘Iran launched a war into Israel, so to say that the Israelis who are defending themselves and our hostages shouldn’t attack sites in Iran that could kill them – especially when you’re the one who gave Iran $7 billion as a commander in chief and then allowed them to acquire nuclear materials – is wildly political.’
Following Tuesday’s attack by Iran on Israel, Biden told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, ‘the answer is no,’ of Israel potentially targeting the country’s nuclear program.
He added that he and the other members of the G-7 all ‘agree that [Israel has] a right to respond, but they should respond proportionally,’