Trump blasts Harris on Iran, says Biden administration is ‘leading us to brink of World War III’

Former President Donald Trump used Iran’s missile attack on Israel on Tuesday to slam Vice President Kamala Harris, blasting her and President Joe Biden as “grossly incompetent” and threatening that they “are leading us to the brink of World War III.”

It was his latest instance of using current events largely out of Harris’ control to bash the vice president — just one day after turning a visit to a community ravaged by Hurricane Helene into a political jab. On Tuesday, Trump blamed the escalation of the war in the Middle East on Biden and Harris’ foreign policy, saying “the so-called enemy doesn’t respect our country any longer.”

“The two incompetent people running our country — and I don’t think they’re even running it — are leading us to the brink of World War III, a war like no other,” Trump told a raucous crowd in Waunakee, Wisconsin, claiming without evidence that the nation’s first and second in command are not in fact in charge of the administration.

Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein declined to comment.

During the speech — advertised as focusing on economics and manufacturing — Trump repeatedly threatened that the evolving situation in the Middle East could result in devastating global war and blamed Iran’s attack on Biden and Harris, whom he said had made the U.S. adversary “very rich in a very short period.”

Trump also repeated a misleading claim about a September 2023 prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Iran, which saw the two countries swap detainees in Qatar on the eve of that year’s United Nations General Assembly.

“If they have somebody who was kidnapped it’s always $6 billion, whoever heard of that?” Trump said. “Somebody else gets like $4,000.”

One of the conditions of the exchange was that the U.S. would unfreeze $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets that were accrued as a result of oil sales to South Korea that occurred at a time when sanctions against Tehran were lifted.

Trump said on Tuesday that money “flooded” Iran with “American cash,” allowing it to fund its militant, U.S.-designated terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. But the Biden administration has defended that provision of the deal in the face of Republican attacks, arguing that it did not constitute the U.S. giving Iran $6 billion to use for weapons. Officials at the time noted the assets were held in a monitored account and could only be used to purchase food and medicine with those funds.

Republicans countered by saying that money is fungible and the access to the funds would free Iran to spend more on its proxies.

Trump also bashed Harris for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claim last month that he was rooting for her — and asserted Iran had also endorsed the vice president. Iran has not endorsed Harris — though three members of the Iranian military hacked the Trump campaign’s email accounts and sent hacked information to the Biden campaign, according to the Justice Department and FBI. U.S. officials also gathered evidence suggesting Iran has hatched plots to kill the former president.

In a statement, Trump campaign Senior Adviser Brian Hughes reiterated that Iran plotted to assassinate Trump, hacked the campaign and shared the information with his rival, though there’s no evidence Biden’s team used or even opened email attachments they were sent.

“Kamala Harris’ weakness has empowered our adversaries to wreak havoc around the world,” he said.

The Iranian attack, which saw Tehran launch nearly 200 missiles toward Israel, was the latest episode of escalation between long-time foes Israel and Iran in the Middle East, as Israel has deployed military operations in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip against two of Tehran’s proxies — the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Biden administration condemned the Iranian attack on Tuesday as a “serious escalation” and has vowed that Iran will face consequences for the launch of missiles. Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters Tuesday that American guided missile destroyers based in the Mediterranean helped knock down Iranian missiles.

But at a White House press briefing, national security adviser Jake Sullivan refused to preview specific U.S. actions, including sanctions, in response to the attack, saying that the U.S. and Israel were still assessing the impact of the strike and discussing options for a response.

Iran, for its part, has defended the strike as a “legal, rational, and legitimate response to the terrorist acts of the Zionist regime — which involved targeting Iranian nationals and interests and infringing upon the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Tehran has also threatened further attacks if Israel and its allies respond to the strikes.

And Israel has vowed to respond. In a video statement shortly after the attack, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the “attack will have consequences.”