Trump Blames Israel-Hamas War on ‘Rigged’ 2020 Election

Donald Trump has used the Israel-Hamas conflict — which has claimed hundreds of lives on both sides — to push his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

While delivering a speech to his supporters at a club event Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump claimed that “if the election wasn’t rigged, there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel.” He added, “The election was rigged, very sadly rigged.”

It’s a false claim that the former president has clung onto despite being indicted in August over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and an anti-democratic campaign that culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. He was arrested again later that month on more federal charges stemming from the effort to overturn the presidential election, bringing his total indictments to four.

Trump also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he said did not assist the U.S. in the 2020 drone strike that killed Iranian military and intelligence official Qasem Soleimani. “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down,” he said to his supporters gathered Wednesday. “That was a very terrible thing.” The former president went on to say Israeli intelligence needed to “straighten it out” and called Hezbollah “very smart.”

Earlier this week, Trump and far-right allies responded to the eruption of deadly violence between Hamas militants and Israeli Defense Forces by using the crisis to push the anti-immigration narrative in the U.S. Keeping with years of MAGA fear-mongering about a porous Southern border — from Trump’s 2015 campaign launch (in which he smeared Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers) to his false claims that entire American towns had fallen under control of the transnational gang MS-13 — the MAGA world pushed the false claim that Hamas had infiltrated the U.S. via the Mexican border.

“The same people that raided Israel are pouring into our once beautiful USA, through our TOTALLY OPEN SOUTHERN BORDER, at Record Numbers,” Trump claimed without evidence on his Truth Social platform on Monday. “Are they planning an attack within our Country? Crooked Joe Biden and his BOSS, Barack Hussein Obama, did this to us!”

On Sunday, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona strongly implied that “Hamas sleeper cells” have “crossed our southern border under the Biden Administration’s policies,” warning, “We are not prepared.” Biggs is among those hard-right Republicans in Congress who denied the results of the 2020 election.

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