
'The hostages are starting to come back. If I weren't here, they wouldn't be back ever,' president says
US President Donald Trump criticized former President Joe Biden's handling of the Middle East on Tuesday, saying he could not secure a Gaza ceasefire and hostage exchange deal sooner.
“Biden couldn't get it done,” Trump told reporters at the White House. "It was only the imposition that I put on it as a deadline that got it done."
“The hostages are starting to come back. If I weren't here, they wouldn't be back ever...They would have all died.”
Trump blamed the Biden administration's “weakness” for the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas, saying “Oct. 7 should have never happened. Nobody should be dead. But through weakness, they allowed it to happen, and then it was a disaster...Six months ago, you would have had 11 more living hostages.”
Asked if he plans to visit the Middle East, he said: “We're thinking about going to the Middle East. Not yet.”
The first six-week phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement took effect on Jan. 19, suspending the Israeli war on the Palestinian enclave.
The three-phase ceasefire agreement includes a prisoner exchange and sustained calm, aiming for a permanent truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Biden said the terms of the ceasefire were based on the framework of a proposal he outlined last May. Asked after the deal's announcement who should get credit for it, he replied: "Is that a joke?"
Israel has killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack by Hamas, which killed nearly 1,200 people, according to Israelis.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins with half of the coastal territory's housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid shortages of food and clean water.
- Trump defends ending Secret Service protection for Bolton
Trump defended his administration's decision to end former National Security Adviser John Bolton's Secret Service protection, saying: “We are not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives.”
He accused Bolton and others, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, of convincing former President George W. Bush to invade Iraq.
"He's the one that got us involved, along with Cheney and a couple of others, convinced Bush, which was a terrible decision, to blow up the Middle East," he said.
“We blew up the Middle East and we left. We got nothing out of it except a lot of death,” Trump said, calling Bolton a “stupid guy” and a “warmonger.”