President Donald Trump cautioned that World War III may be imminent if Democratic frontrunner Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidential race in November, ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.
“We’ll see how it goes,” Trump told reporters. “If we win, it will be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly. If we don’t we’re all going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a third world war. You are closer to a third world war right now than at any time during the second world war. You’ve never been so close because you have incompetent people running our country.”
The meeting, which took place at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, came days after Netanyahu addressed Congress and met with President Joe Biden and Harris in Washington, D.C.
Harris is “worse” than Biden on issues in the Middle East, Trump said Friday, and he called her remarks from earlier in the week “disrespectful.”
In a statement after she met with Netanyahu on Thursday, Harris said that she would “not be silent” about civilian life in Gaza, and that “we cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering.”
“I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there,” Harris said after the meeting. “I will not be silent . . . Israel has a right to defend itself. And how it does so matters.”
Trump and Netanyahu, who haven’t met in person since September 2020, also spoke about the rise of antisemitism on college campuses. Trump vowed to “combat antisemitism from spreading throughout college campuses across the United States” if elected president and “pledged that when he returns to the White House, he will make every effort to bring Peace to the Middle East,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.
During his address before Congress, Netanyahu took aim at American anti-Israel protesters, calling them “useful idiots” for Iran and arguing that they don’t understand the history of the region they feel so passionately about. Even as Netanyahu spoke, thousands of anti-Israel protesters surrounded the Capitol, burning American and Israeli flags, vandalizing statues with pro-Hamas graffiti, and attempting to breach police barricades.
Harris, for her part, condemned the “despicable acts” carried out by protesters in a Thursday statement.
“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation,” Harris said in a statement on Thursday.
The Trump campaign released a statement summarizing the former president’s meeting with Netanyahu, saying the prime minister thanked Trump for the policies he pursued while in office.
“Netanyahu thanked President Trump and his Administration for working to promote stability in the region through, among many historic achievements, the Abraham Accords, moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, eliminating Qasem Soleimani, ending the horrific Iran Nuclear Deal, as well as combatting anti-Semitism in America and abroad,” the Trump campaign said.