Former President Donald Trump followed 2024 rival and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in explicitly announcing on Monday his support for a ban on refugees from the Gaza Strip.
During a speech in Iowa, Trump said he would expand his “wildly successful” travel ban for “terror-plagued countries, territories, and places” if re-elected to the White House.
He later added, “We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, or Libya, or anywhere else that threatens our security.”
Over the weekend, roughly a week after Hamas launched a deadly terrorist attack on Israel from Gaza that killed at least 30 Americans and many others, DeSantis said the United States should not accept refugees from the territory.
“We cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees,” DeSantis said at an event in Iowa. “I am not going to do that. If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.”
DeSantis also called on neighboring Arab countries to take in the refugees.
With Trump explicitly declaring on Monday that Gaza would be part of an expanded travel ban, Team DeSantis had some notes to share.
“Trump literally needs a teleprompter in order to finally catch up with a position DeSantis’ took 3 days ago on Gaza refugees,” DeSantis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said in a post to X.
“Glad to hear the teleprompter is working again!” said the “DeSantis War Room” account, adding that DeSantis “called for this three days ago, but we welcome Donald Trump following DeSantis’ strong leadership.
Some have pushed back by emphasizing that Trump previously called for reinstating and strengthening his travel ban that President Joe Biden overturned upon getting into office.
Stephen Miller, a top aide in Trump’s White House, recently posted to X, “did you know that President Trump stopped refugee resettlement from Syria and Somalia, and stopped jihadist refugee resettlement altogether? He also created the National Vetting center and added … new layers of screening to keep threats out of the country.”
Trump has a wide polling lead nationally over his GOP rivals in the 2024 presidential race, including DeSantis, but the Florida governor is placing much of his resources on securing a victory in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses and turning the tide in his favor.
Elsewhere in his remarks on Monday, Trump said his administration in a second term would “cut off every penny of money we send to the Palestinians and the terrorists on day one” and stand with Israel in its fight to crush Hamas.
Trump also vowed to “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities” (which is similar to DeSantis’ stance on visa holders openly supporting Hamas) and “proactively send ICE to pro-Jihadist demonstrations to enforce our immigration laws and remove the violators from our country.”