Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis railed against former President Trump for calling the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah “very smart” and criticizing Israel.
“Terrorists have murdered at least 1,200 Israelis and 22 Americans and are holding more hostage, so it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart,'” DeSantis wrote Wednesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
DeSantis, the governor of Florida, vowed to stand with Israel and “treat terrorists like the scum that they are.”
His comments were in response to Trump’s speech in West Palm Beach, Fla., where the former president said Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon, is “very smart, they’re all very smart.”
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged fire in recent days in the wake of Israel’s separate front against Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched a multi-pronged surprise attack against Israel over the weekend.
The former president, the current front-runner in the GOP presidential race, called out the Biden administration and Israeli leaders for discussing Israel’s vulnerabilities, suggesting their public discussions helped Hezbollah plan further attacks against Israel. Trump also dug into the potential intelligence failures of Israel, which appeared somewhat unprepared for Hamas’s onslaught of attacks.
“So when I see sometimes the intelligence … you talk about the intelligence or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve got to straighten it out because they’re fighting, potentially a very big force,” he said Wednesday night.
In a separate interview with Fox News’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show” — set to air Thursday — Trump claimed Israel “wouldn’t have had to be prepared,” if he was president, suggesting the U.S. would have detected and stopped Hamas’s attack under his watch.
Israel’s fight against Hamas has already claimed just more than 2,500 lives from both sides, including at least 22 Americans.
The Israeli Military said more than 1,200 Israelis — including civilians and soldiers — have been killed, with another 3,000 wounded as of Thursday. In Gaza, an estimated 1,354 Palestinians have died and 6,049 others were injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.