Donald Trump Praises Hezbollah, Criticizes Israeli Government in Wake of Attacks

Politicians on both sides of the aisle came down hard on Trump Wednesday night after the former president praised the Lebanese militant group and longtime Israeli enemy Hezbollah, calling the group “very smart.”

“Two nights ago, I read all of Biden’s security people, can you imagine, national defense people, and they said, ‘Gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn’t attack from the north, because that’s the most vulnerable spot,’” Trump said at a gathering in West Palm Beach.

“You know Hezbollah is very smart, they’re all very smart,” he added.

Trump also took the opportunity to complain about Israel’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for refusing to aid his administration in the 2020 assassination of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard chief, Major General Qassem Soleimani.

“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down, that was a very terrible thing,” Trump said.

Governor Ron DeSantis was quick to slam the comments, taking a hard line against his former mentor, tweeting that it was “absurd” that the GOP presidential front-runner would “praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.’”

Trump, who has recently polled as much as 40 percent higher than DeSantis in the GOP primaries, has a long history of vocally supporting authoritarian states and leaders around the world, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.

The White House also condemned the statement, calling Trump’s language “dangerous and unhinged.”

“It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organization as ‘smart,’” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.