Former GOP Representative Adam Kinzinger ripped into Donald Trump on Sunday for what he called the former president's "insane" reaction to the escalating tensions between Iran and Israel.
On Saturday evening, Israel reported that over 300 missiles and drones launched against it by Iran had been shot down. This major attack came as retaliation for an Israeli strike earlier in the month in Syria that killed 12 people in total, including two Iranian generals and five other officers.
Tensions have been simmering between the two nations for months since the surprise October 7, 2023, attack against Israel by Hamas, a militant Palestinian group. Both Israel and the United States have accused Iran of funding Hamas and supporting it politically.
In the wake of the incident from Saturday, Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee, claimed during a campaign rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, that such a thing would not have happened if he was in office, blaming it on President Joe Biden.
"I want to say God bless the people of Israel — they're under attack right now," Trump said. "That's because we show great weakness. This would not happen. The great weakness that we've shown is unbelievable and it would not have happened if we were in office."
In response, Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who has long been a prominent GOP critic of Trump and his political agenda, called the former president's assertion "insane," highlighting a 2020 strike against U.S. forces by Iran that left many troops injured.
"This is insane. It did happen!" he wrote. "Iran struck and injured 100 Americans in Iraq and Trump responded with nothing but fear. He's a small man."
The missile attack Kinzinger referenced was carried out by Iran against two U.S. military bases in Iraq in early January 2020, in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani a few days prior, which had been ordered by Trump. In the wake of the attack, over 100 troops were injured and diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.
In a September 2021 podcast interview, Alyssa Farah Griffin claimed that, at the time of the attack when she was serving as press secretary for the Pentagon, she felt pressured by the administration to downplay the injuries caused by the Iranian attack. Trump, she claimed, insisted that the attack caused no casualties and called the reported injuries "headaches" and "not very serious."
Biden, who has maintained support for U.S. ally Israel since its war with Hamas began, met with his national security team on Saturday to monitor the situation. In a statement, the president said U.S. forces assisted in defending Israel from Iran's aerial threats.
"Earlier today, Iran—and its proxies operating out of Yemen, Syria, and Iraq—launched an unprecedented air attack against military facilities in Israel. I condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms," Biden said. "At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week. Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles."
Biden said he also spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reaffirming Washington's "ironclad commitment to the security of Israel."
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