Former president Donald Trump criticized President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday after Iran attacked Israel with a barrage of missiles, blasting the pair for their “nonexistent” leadership and warning against imminent “global catastrophe.”
“I’ve been talking about World War III for a long time, and I don’t want to make predictions because the predictions always come true. But they are very close to global catastrophe,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Waunakee, Wis., on Tuesday. “We have a nonexistent president and a nonexistent vice president who should be in charge. But nobody knows what’s going on. She was at a fundraiser in San Francisco.”
Iran launched a barrage of roughly 180 ballistic missiles toward the Jewish State earlier on Tuesday in an attack that lasted less than an hour and caused very few reported injuries.
The attack seemed to be “defeated and ineffective,” said White House national-security adviser Jake Sullivan. The Israel Defense Forces said explosions seen above Israel were either successful interceptions or missiles that evaded Israel’s air-defense system and hit open land.
The White House anticipated the attack in response to Israel’s targeted air strike on Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on Friday. The U.S. warned earlier Tuesday that a direct assault on Israel would “carry severe consequences for Iran.”
Trump, meanwhile, said world leaders do not respect Biden or Harris.
“If I were in charge, today’s attack on Israel never would have happened. All of the things that we’re talking about never would have happened, including that botched withdrawal that made us look so bad,” he said of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
“If I win, we will have peace in the world again. I guarantee we will have peace in the world again,” the former president said. “And if Kamala gets four more — unthinkable, right? — if she gets four more years, the world goes up in smoke.”
New polling from the Institute for Global Affairs finds that the economy remains a top issue for voters, but concern over foreign affairs is on the rise: About twice as many Americans said foreign policy is a top priority in a recent survey compared with this time last year.
Harris leads Trump in IGA’s national polling as the candidate who is likeliest to pursue a foreign policy that “benefits people like you,” is less likely to send U.S. troops to an “unnecessary war,” and would improve America’s international standing. But in key battleground states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada — voters feel the opposite, with Trump leading on each of those questions, the poll found.