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Help Israel, blame Biden: 2024 Republicans converge in response to Hamas attack

THE NEWS

The Republican candidates for president agree on two things about Hamas’s attack on Israel: They’d give the Jewish state anything it needed, and whatever came next would be Joe Biden’s fault.

“The atrocities we’re witnessing in Israel would never have happened if I was president,” Donald Trump said in Wolfeboro, N.H. on Monday, promising to reinstate “the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries” if he won in 2024.

“I can tell you this: I wouldn’t have slept through those attacks,” Ron DeSantis told a town hall audience in Cedar Rapids on Sunday. “If I were in the White House. I’d have been up at 2 in the morning, and we would have been doing what we need to do to protect this country.”

In a Tuesday speech at the Hudson Institute, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott went further, saying that the president had “blood on his hands” by not doing more, earlier, to support Israel. “His weakness invited the attack,” Scott said. “His cash giveaways to Iran funded the attack.”

Hours into the war, most of the GOP field had condemned the Biden administration for not linking Hamas’ attack more strongly to Iran. One by one, they suggested that the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets — earmarked for humanitarian purposes, as part of prisoner swap — was tantamount to helping finance the attack. “They’re moving money around as we speak,” Nikki Haley told MSNBC, “because they know that $6 billion is going to be released.”

On CNN, Mike Pence took a shot at his higher-polling rivals — “this is what happens when we have leading voices like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world” — but reserved the most blame for Biden.

“President Joe Biden’s kowtowing for the last two-and-a-half years to the mullahs in Iran, lifting sanctions, begging them to get back in the Iran nuclear deal, and then paying $6 billion in a ransom for hostages, I think set the conditions for this unprecedented terrorist attack,” Pence said on Sunday.

There was no dissent from that from any Republican candidate; they differed only in how they wanted to punish Iran, and how much they worried that terror could come to America, too. DeSantis went to a Florida synagogue on Tuesday to announce new state sanctions on Iranian business, while balking at a question from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on whether America should support Israeli strikes on Iran: “It’s too soon to tell.”

DAVID’S VIEW

The fundamental problem for Donald Trump’s challengers is that he was president, and they weren’t. He can hark back to how things were when he ran things — America’s embassy moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem with minimal blowback, relentless sanctions on Iran — and they usually have to praise him and agree.

That’s been the state of the primary since Saturday, with Trump’s rivals asking voters to picture them as commander-in-chief by saying they’d model his approach to Israel. Haley and Pence own part of that policy, as former U.N. ambassador and vice president, and agree with his premise that “peace through strength” was supplanted by “appeasement,” which made Israel vulnerable.

Trump isn’t vulnerable here, in a Republican primary, and Biden is — even if the actions he’s taken so far rhyme with what Republicans want. (“I would have constant conversations with Netanyahu to make sure that he knows there is no daylight between our country and Israel,” Scott told Newsmax; according to Netanyahu, that’s what he’s gotten from Biden.)

And by Tuesday afternoon, there were some emerging distinctions in the 2024 candidates’ approach. Vivek Ramaswamy, who’d said American aid to Israel wouldn’t be as necessary after he won the presidency and made peace, said that his rivals were being too glib about the risk of a wider war: “We require a rational response that supports Israel while avoiding another U.S.-led disaster in the Middle East,” he said on Fox News. In an interview with Tucker Carlson he described a “zero sum game” where Biden’s interests conflicted with Israel’s — specifically, “300,000 U.S. artillery shells stored in Israel that we encouraged [them] to send to Ukraine.”

Ramaswamy was previewing a coming fight between Republicans, about whether new aid for Israel should be split from the aid Biden wants for Ukraine. But within the primary, Republican voters view Trump as he views himself — as a successful president who would have prevented all of this, making the funding debate irrelevant.

“Think what our country would have been like if the election had not been rigged and stolen,” Trump said on Monday. “Israel would not now be under attack, zero chance. Ukraine would not be under attack by Russia, zero chance.”

THE VIEW FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

The president addressed the nation on Tuesday to condemn the attacks and pledge support to Israel. He did not mention Iran, as reporters pressed the administration with Republicans’ questions about the country’s assets, but offered a broad warning in his speech.

“To any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t,” Biden said on Tuesday. “Let there be no doubt: The United States has Israel’s back.”

His administration has taken the Republican attacks over the Iran hostage deal seriously, racing to respond in interviews, social media posts, and briefings that none of the money has been spent and comes with restrictions. The White House has pointed out that the Trump administration made humanitarian exceptions to sanctions, too, without the outrage that Republicans are now directing toward un-freezing any of Iran’s assets. And it’s pushed back at the demand to link Iran directly to the attacks, as Republican challengers demand they do so (the issue is sensitive in Israel too, whose government has also not accused Iran of planning the attack).

“We’ve said since the beginning that Iran is complicit in this attack, in the broad sense, because they have provided the lion’s share of funding for the military wing of Hamas; they have provided training; they have provided capabilities; they have provided support,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday. “[But] in terms of this gruesome attack on Oct. 7, we don’t have that information.”

NOTABLE

• In Politico, Nick Reisman captures how a rally endorsed by New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter divided the left. “The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. said, and didn’t represent people who rejected “both Hamas’ horrifying attacks against innocent civilians as well as the grave injustices and violence Palestinians face under occupation.”
• Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant talked with former Trump national security advisor Robert O’Brien on Sunday, who said that America would “have to be prepared to rescue Americans who are taken hostage by terrorist organizations.”

Wisconsin. State supreme court Justice Janet Protasiewicz confirmed that she wouldn’t recuse herself from upcoming arguments over the state’s gerrymandered maps. She cited an argument Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito made last month, rebuffing Democrats who wanted him to recuse himself on a case after granting an interview to attorneys working on it: “When there is no sound reason for a Justice to recuse, the Justice has a duty to sit.” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who has assembled a panel of judges to make his case for recusal, responded by predicting that Alito’s court would “have the last word.” (One of those judges has already said that recusal isn’t necessary.) Protasiewicz would likely join a 4-3 majority to strike down the state’s maps; recusal would likely deadlock the court and leave the maps in place.

Georgia. Republican state senate leaders filed a complaint against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, making use of a brand new law that gives the legislature power to sanction prosecutors. As first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein, Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch and other Republicans accused Willis of “prioritiz[ing] cases that align with her political party’s interests” while the county’s jail grew overcrowded. The complaint, filed as soon as the law went into effect, but not made fully public, had been floated as a way to investigate Willis ever since the August indictment of Donald Trump.

Cameron for Governor, “Kentucky First.” Joe Biden is far less popular in Kentucky than Gov. Andy Beshear, and Attorney Gen. Daniel Cameron is trying to nationalize their race by invoking the president. “The Washington liberals want to change our country for the worse,” Cameron says, running through his role in lawsuits to stop Biden’s changes to border policy, vaccine mandate, and Keystone XL pipeline cancellation — proof that he’ll “fight” the left-wing elite. “Andy Beshear? He never will.”

Tate for Governor, “Signature.” Mississippi’s Republican governor has attacked Democrat Brandon Presley over his party label and his reluctance to embrace a ban on youth gender medicine; Presley’s attacked the governor over the state’s wasted welfare money. Citing an August report from Fox News, the Reeves campaign argues that Presley is the race’s most “corrupt politician,” taking donations from solar company staffers in Tennessee before they build a green energy project in Mississippi. Presley’s campaign had polled on whether that story could damage him; this is one way to find out.

Brandon Presley Campaign, “Hunt.” Thirty-nine years ago, Mitch McConnell won his first Senate race with an ad that portrayed a hunter and four bloodhounds searching desperately for the incumbent. Presley’s ad borrows the concept and even some of the visuals, like the hunter holding up a T-shirt for his dogs to get the scent, to mock Gov. Reeves for dodging a debate. Shortly after the ad went live, Reeves agreed to a single debate, on Nov. 1, with the Democrat.

FairVote has paid for two rounds of ranked-choice polling, attempting to answer the question in every Trump challenger’s mind: Could they win the nomination if every other challenger quit the race? So far, nobody can pull it off. After the first Republican debate, DeSantis had the most support of any Trump alternative, but lost by 12 points if the race came down to the two of them. This month, far fewer Republicans list DeSantis as a second choice, and more of them pick Haley, which helps her out-last every other candidate and go to the final round against Trump. She loses it, by 25 points — but if Haley has a chance at the nomination, it starts with the race winnowing down to two candidates before the primary in South Carolina, where she’s more popular than she is nation-wide.

Plenty of conservative activists celebrated the end of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, but Republicans had a more complicated reaction to it than Democrats or independents. Two-thirds of Democrats and independents are happy about the outcome of last week’s vote. Just 53% of all Republicans approve of what happened, along with just 54% of conservatives. But the conservatives who wanted him gone did so because they saw him as weak — 80% say he was ineffective, and 54% say he worked too closely with Democrats.

Nevada’s seen far less in-person campaigning and spending than the other three early primary states. There are new reasons for that, like the state GOP holding its own caucuses, separate from the state-run primary, and restricting super PACs from spending there — which DeSantis super PAC co-founder Ken Cuccinelli has called “rigging.” The result is an overwhelming Trump lead in a place where he’s the best-liked GOP candidate. Eighty-five percent of Republicans say they’re “enthusiastic” or “satisfied” about Trump running, compared to 66% who say that of DeSantis and 45% who say it of Haley. Nevada’s GOP electorate has fewer college-educated voters than New Hampshire or Iowa, and those have been the Republicans most desperate for a Trump alternative.

White House. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. launched an independent presidential bid on Monday, abandoning a primary challenge to President Biden in favor of “independence from the Democratic Party and from all political parties.”

Kennedy had hinted at the decision for weeks, framing it as a response to two realities – the impossibility of winning a “rigged” Democratic primary, and the unpopularity of the likeliest major party nominees.

“Three-quarters of Americans believe that President Biden is too old to govern effectively,” Kennedy told a crowd in Philadelphia’s Independence Square. “President Trump faces multiple civil and criminal trials. Both of them have favorability ratings that are deep in negative territory. That’s what two-party politics has given us.” There was an opening, he insisted, for a “populist movement that defies left/right division.”

The Monday launch event pulled that off — it was likely the only political rally this year that featured both a Native American land acknowledgment from the stage, and a man who QAnon followers believe to be the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., in the crowd. Four of Kennedy’s actual siblings denounced his decision to run as an independent, as did the Republican National Committee, with a memo that condemned the candidate’s “record of endorsing Hillary, supporting the Green New Deal, fighting against the Keystone Pipeline, and praising AOC’s tax hikes.”

Kennedy himself has said that his candidacy likely hurts Trump more than Biden — though he said in Philadelphia that he planned to “spoil” the election “for both of them,” by winning it. The Trump campaign’s internal polling has backed up Kennedy’s assessment; polling for a pro-Kennedy super PAC, which was largely funded by Republicans, pegged his support at 19%, with more support from non-Democrats than Democrats. “I’ve seen the polls that they don’t show you,” he said in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, the GOP primary field shrunk by two: former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and former Cranston, R.I. Steve Laffey ended their campaigns.

Laffey, who’d raised less than $200,000 and was rarely included in primary polling or candidate forums, explained to ABC News that “the GOP is dead,” and planned to leave the party. Hurd, who became an anti-Trump presence at cattle calls, tried and failed to climb onto the debate stage; he endorsed Nikki Haley as the “best person” to beat Trump for the nomination.

But Hurd had been more critical of Trump than Haley, who has largely limited her critique of the former president to his opposition to Ukraine aid, his spending record, and his role in stirring up a riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Hurd’s breakthrough moment — for the media, if not voters — had been telling Iowa Republicans that Trump was “running to stay out of prison,” and getting heckled until he walked off their fundraising dinner’s stage.

House. Former New York Rep. Tom Suozzi announced a comeback bid for Long Island’s 3rd congressional district, won by Rep. George Santos after Suozzi left to challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul in the Democratic primary. (He got just 13% of the vote after a campaign that blamed progressive reformers for rising crime.) “The madness of Washington, D.C. and the absurdity of George Santos remaining in the United States Congress is obvious to everyone,” he said in a statement.

• four days until elections in Louisiana
• 28 days until elections in Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Virginia
• 29 days until the third Republican presidential primary debate
• 97 days until the Iowa caucuses
• 393 days until the 2024 presidential election

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