Trump tells Jewish Republicans that Israel will be ‘gone’ if Harris wins in November

Donald Trump has claimed Israel will be “gone” if Kamala Harris wins the election, during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.

“If they win, Israel is gone. Just remember that. If they win, Israel is gone,” Trump told the crowd via live video feed on Thursday. “You can forget about Israel, that’s what’s going to happen. So they have to get out on Nov. 5 and they have to vote for Trump. If they don’t, I think it’s going to be a very terrible situation.”

He also claimed Jews who vote for Democrats need to have their “head examined” and wondered: “How do they exist?” He also claimed if Harris becomes president, “you’re not going to have an Israel...Israel will no longer exist.”

During the speech, the former president appeared to initially misstate the last name of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israel-American hostage killed by Hamas, as “Goldman.”

Goldberg-Polin was one of six hostages found dead in Gaza last week, which prompted widespread protests across Israel as residents demand faster progress on returning the remaining Hamas captives, and ending the war nearly a year after the militant group’s initial October 7 invasion.

The Republican presidential candidate’s remarks to the group in Vegas were met with a mix of praise and criticism. A longtime member of the RJC told The Dispatch that the room largely viewed Trump as the superior candidate to Harris.

“People may have lingering concerns or they wish maybe their preferred primary candidate would have prevailed,” the member said. “But everybody here I think is—not everybody, but the vast majority of people are—practical, living in the real world, and they understand that it’s a binary choice and most people think that’s a very easy choice.”

Caroline