With much of the world transfixed by the bloody Hamas terror attack on Israel, former President Donald Trump vowed to re-impose a travel ban on people from countries—predominantly Muslim—where terrorism is tolerated or actively stoked.
The deadly assault on Israeli communities over the weekend by operatives from the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group drew sharp criticism of the Biden administration by Republican presidential contenders, who cited a $6 billion transfer from Washington to Tehran days before the attack.
President Trump added his voice to the chorus of critical takes at campaign rallies in Iowa (Cedar Rapids and Waterloo) over the weekend and in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on Oct. 9.
“I predicted war in Israel immediately after it was announced that Joe Biden gave the $6 billion to Iran,” President Trump said at the Cedar Rapids rally.
At the earlier event in Waterloo, he said he “would not be at all surprised” if some of that $6 billion helped fund Hamas’s assault on Israel.
The Biden administration has insisted that none of the $6 billion has been spent and even if it were, the money could only be spent on things like food and medicine, not arming terrorists.
Then, at a Monday rally in Wolfeboro, President Trump reiterated his support for Israel, while pledging to reimpose a travel ban from certain countries where terrorism is tolerated or encouraged, though he did not specify which ones.
“As president, I will once again stand strongly with the state of Israel, and we will cut off the money to the terrorists on day one,” President Trump said, before adding that he would “reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries.”
Terrorism In Focus
President Trump’s travel ban remarks fit into a broader theme of ensuring U.S. national security by better controlling the country’s borders and denying easy entry to people who may wish to cause destruction and harm.It’s something President Trump hammered home in a post on Truth Social, in which he said that the same people who mounted the deadly attack on Israel may well be entering the United States through “our totally open southern border,” while asking: “Are they planning an attack within our Country?”
That number is bigger than the last six years combined.
Travel Bans Redux?
President Trump, like many U.S. conservatives, has championed border security, with his 2016 signature presidential campaign pledge to “build the wall” being but one example.At the end of 2015, as the presidential campaign was in full swing, his declared his support for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” until such a time when officials fully understood what was going on.
Then, about a week after being sworn into office in 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States, which became known unofficially as the “Muslim ban.”
The travel ban applied to people from seven majority-Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) for 90 days, with some exceptions. The restriction was challenged in court, with President Trump following it up with several other travel bans, expanding restrictions to North Korea and Venezuela, which were also challenged in court.
By the time the U.S. Supreme Court upheld version 3.0 of the Trump travel ban in June 2018, it covered travelers from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, North Korea, and Venezuela.
All of the Trump-era travel restrictions were rescinded by President Joe Biden on the day he was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021.
At his campaign rally in New Hampshire on Monday, President Trump recalled his executive actions after taking office.
“I withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the regime, and imposed a strict travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country,” he said, adding that “Joe Biden undid it. He undid it all and gave billions and billions of dollars to the world’s top sponsor of terror, tossing Israel to the bloodthirsty terrorists.”
‘Grave Danger’ of World War III
President Trump also said at the New Hampshire rally that the Hamas attack on Israel had the potential to start World War III while drawing ties between the Biden administration’s flooding of male, military-aged unvetted illegal immigrants into the country and the Pearl Harbor style-attack by Hamas terrorists.“We are in grave danger of having World War III,” President Trump said. “This will be world obliteration. This is a real deal.”
At the same time, he said that, if elected to office in 2024, he “would stop World War III.”
Ghazi Hamas, a spokesman for Hamas, told the BBC that the group had received support from the Iranian Islamic regime in its ambush of a small farming town in Israel.
