Republicans Are Using Attack on Israel to Take Cynical Swings at Biden

Republicans are blaming President Joe Biden for the deadly Hamas attack on Israel in a transparent effort to capitalize politically on the conflict. “They didn’t have that level of aggression with me,” former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner, said in Iowa over the weekend, accusing a “weak and ineffective” Biden of allowing the attack. “This would have never happened with me.”

His fellow 2024 contenders followed suit, with Chris Christie charging that “Biden’s appeasement of Israel’s enemies has invited this war against Israel.” Others claimed—without evidence—that the Biden administration essentially funded the Hamas attack when it unfroze six billion dollars in Iranian assets in a prisoner swap. “Our taxpayer dollars are funding Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah,” Vivek Ramaswamy wrote. “This will end on Day 1 of my administration.”

“Iran has helped fund this war against Israel and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran have helped fill their coffers,” Ron DeSantis echoed Saturday. “We are going to stand with Israel as they root out Hamas and we need to stand up to Iran.”

The Biden administration has emphasized that American taxpayers did not, in fact, fund the attack Saturday, during the Simchat Torah holiday. “Not a penny has been spent” of the Iranian assets the United States has opened up, Brian Nelson, under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Treasury Department, wrote over the weekend. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also added Sunday that the administration is still investigating Iran’s possible involvement in the incursion. “We don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or carrying out, but that’s something we’re looking at very carefully,” Blinken said on Meet the Press Sunday.

But that didn’t stop Republicans from accusing the Biden administration of inadvertently funding the attack. “Do you think it was irresponsible of your rivals to level that allegation without any evidence or proof?” NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Nikki Haley on Sunday. “I actually think it was irresponsible for Secretary Blinken to say that the $6 billion doesn’t weigh in here,” Haley responded. “Let’s be honest with the American people and understand that Hamas knows and Iran knows they’re moving money around as we speak, because they know six billion is going to be released,” the former United Nations ambassador added. “That’s the reality.”

Fellow GOP hopeful Tim Scott went even further, suggesting Sunday that Biden is “complicit” in the attack.  

It’s a cynical framing, as Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel inadvertently laid bare on Fox News over the weekend: “I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel—time and time again—and Joe Biden has been weak,”  she said. 

But this is obviously about more than just cheap political point-scoring. The Hamas attack over the weekend left more than 700 dead and at least 2,300 wounded in Israel, which responded with a siege that has killed at least 590 in Gaza and injured thousands of others. It’s a horrific situation—with innocent civilians caught in the middle. “For too many Republicans, their hatred of Democrats is their only organizing prism,” as Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote Sunday, after a GOP colleague claimed Biden’s “appeasement” of Iran had led to the war. “Even on a day like today all they can do is attack.”