LAS VEGAS – Former President Trump said Saturday that he is “proud to be the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” declared that President Biden has “betrayed Israel and the Jewish community,” and vowed that, if re-elected in 2024, the United States will “stand with” the Jewish state “once again.”
Trump, addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition annual conference via satellite on Saturday, just days after announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, warned that the Biden administration is “destroying our nation before our very eyes.”
“We have to push back hard on every overreach and call out every single failure, of which there’s so many, and then we have to take back the White House in 2024 — that’s imperative,” Trump said, promising to “revitalize our alliances with our close friend and ally, the State of Israel.”
People listen as former President Donald Trump speaks remotely to an annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
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“The alliance is not strong now, not even strong by a little bit,” Trump said. “Under my administration, we fought for Israel and the Jewish community like no president in history.”
He added: “Everybody in the room knows that I was proud to be the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”
Trump said that while “working together with all of you, I have kept my promises, officially recognizing the true capital of Israel and opened the American Embassy in Jerusalem.”
In 2018, the Trump administration moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – a relocation long debated in Washington – and one that showed the U.S. officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
US President Donald Trump (L) arrives at the Israel Museum to speak in Jerusalem on May 23, 2017, accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
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“I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, something that most people didn’t even ask me to do because they felt it was impossible — 52 years they were working on that — I got it done in one day,” Trump said — met by laughter and applause.
“I withdrew the United States from the corrupt hypocritical U.N. Human Rights Council, which had allowed the world and in the most horrific human rights abusers, to attack the United States and to attack Israel,” he continued. “I withdrew from the one-sided Iran nuclear deal and imposed the toughest ever sanctions on the Iranian regime.”
Trump, in a swipe at President Biden, said he “would never allow the State of Israel to be threatened with nuclear destruction like it’s happening right now.”
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“Working with our Israeli allies, we destroyed the ISIS territorial caliphate — 100% of it,” he continued, adding that he “appointed a special envoy to combat the scourge of antisemitism worldwide.”
Abraham Accords signing ceremony at the White House on September 13, 2020. (Getty)
Trump also celebrated his administration’s brokering of the Abraham Accords — a “historic peace agreement” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that normalized relations and created bilateral agreements regarding “investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, health care, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit.”
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“With the historic Abraham Accords, we created peace in the Middle East, something that nobody thought would even be possible to say, let alone get it done,” Trump said.
“Tragically, Joe Biden has betrayed Israel and the Jewish community and squandered our amazing success,” Trump continued, adding that from the “very beginning” of the Biden administration, Biden “sold out Israel’s security and began begging to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal on even worse terms.”
President Trump became the first sitting president to visit the Western Wall on May 22, 2017. (Reuters)
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“It was a disaster before, but these would be even worse terms,” Trump said.
The Biden administration has been in negotiations with Tehran to re-enter the Iran Nuclear Deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, for months. The deal would give Iran billions in sanctions relief in exchange for its agreement to roll back its nuclear program to limits set in the 2015 deal — which includes caps on enrichment and how much material it can stockpile.
“When we win in 2024, the era of backstabbing and betrayal will end and the United States will stand with Israel once more and just as it did in my administration — two years ago, we were a great nation,” Trump said. “And soon, with the help of the Republican Jewish Coalition and patriots all across this land, we will be a great nation again.”
Trump was met with applause from RJC conference attendees, chants for “four more years,” and standing ovations.
Meanwhile, during a question and answer session with moderators, Trump said that the Republican Party is “a much bigger, more powerful party than it was before I got there.”
“It has much more influence,” he said.