Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said during an interview over the weekend that the Biden-Harris administration, by not backing Israel more following the October 7 terrorist attack, have caused the war against Hamas in Gaza to last longer and more people, including hostages, to die.
Cotton made the remarks during a Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper while discussing Israel’s recent strikes against the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon last week.
The Biden-Harris administration is “not giving them the political and diplomatic support that they needed from the very beginning,” Cotton said. “Rather than trying to put constant pressure on Israel, more pressure than we put on Iran and its terrorist networks, if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would simply adopt a policy to let Israel win and back them to the hilt, the war on Hamas probably would have ended a long time ago.”
“Earlier this year, there was a de facto partial arms embargo on Israel, not just the 2,000-pound bombs, which they do need to hit Hamas in its deep and buried tunnels, but mortar rounds and artillery shells and small-arms ammunition. Now they even have a tractor embargo in Israel,” he continued. “So Israeli soldiers are going to be exposed to minefields that can’t be cleared because the Biden and Harris administration wants to allow them to get access to the tractors and the bulldozers they need to clear those minefields.”
He said that the administration’s policies have not only “had the effect of prolonging the fighting,” but they’ve also likely resulted in more hostages being murdered by Hamas.
“If the Biden-Harris administration had backed Israel from the beginning, not only would this war likely have already ended with fewer civilian casualties, but we would have gotten more hostages out earlier and alive,” he said. “What Hamas is doing, though, is continually moving the goalposts on any kind of hostage exchange for duly convicted terrorists that Hamas wants back. And the Biden-Harris administration keeps allowing them to move the goalposts.”
WATCH:
