Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday made some of his most forceful comments yet in support of Israel, as he criticized the pro-Palestine protests that continue to grip university campuses across the U.S.
In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump rebuked the protests, arguing that some of the demonstrators “deny October 7th ever happened.”
“October 7th did happen, and it was horrible and violent and disgraceful,” Trump said, adding that he thinks some of the people protesting have been “brainwashed.”
“They say none of this stuff happened and you know, we want Israel back,” he said. “The fact is you have to get Israel back where it belongs because what’s happening in Israel right now is really not sustainable either. We have to let Israel complete their war on terror. It’s a horrible thing, but they have to do it and they have to do it fast, and we have to get back to order.”
Trump’s comments echo other conservatives’ criticism of the protest movement, with some GOP lawmakers going as far as to call for foreign students protesting to be deported and for the National Guard to be sent in to dispel demonstrations.
The student protests have raged on for over a week in the face of hundreds of arrests across more than a dozen campuses nationwide.
But Trump—whose past comment on the demonstrations was simply “stop the protests now”—went on to offer strong support for Israel’s military offensive into Gaza, which has left more than 34,000 Palestinians dead, saying that Israel has to “get the job done” even though “it’s a horrible job to do.”
“When there’s an attack, a sneak attack like an October 7th that’s so violent and such hatred, you have to clean it out,” Trump said. “You have to clean out the cancer. And you have to let them do their job, and frankly, it has to be done fast because this is not sustainable for anybody. The job has to be done, it has to be done fast.”
Trump then took a dig at President Joe Biden, saying he thinks Biden is “not on the side of Israel and he’s making a tremendous mistake” before touting his administration’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018.
At the time, the decision to break with decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as the capital garnered praise from Israelis and condemnation from Palestinians. The move was controversial in part because the United Nations regards East Jerusalem as occupied and believe it should serve as the capital of any future, independent Palestinian state.
His forceful comments on Tuesday night mark a shift from some of his past remarks, including that Israel’s actions were causing it to lose “the PR war” and that it made a “very big mistake” in publicizing images of military offensives into Gaza.
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