As deadline approached, Hezbollah had just launched long range rockets to strike towards Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria. The Israeli Defense Forces had responded with more than 300 attacks on targets within Lebanon, some within Beirut. The Pentagon announced that our second aircraft carrier, the Harry Truman, was beginning its deployment early to reach the region and join another American carrier task force already deployed there, this one including and around the Abraham Lincoln.
The Biden/Harris Middle East policy is in flames, as is the region. Given that all Vice President Harris can say about Israel and Hamas—’We must get a deal done!’— what would she say about Israel and Lebanon? What former President Trump has said, consistently, is that Israel needs to win, fast.
For whom do you suppose Israelis would vote if they could vote in U.S. elections? For whom would the Islamist ruling class of Iran vote? (Iran is not a free country like Israel, so the hypothetical question about voting in our presidential election is restricted to those whom the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei would allow to vote.)
We don’t know, and there’s little to go on. The Jewish People Policy Institute did one survey of Israeli Jews in July, before President Biden withdrew, and found that among Jews in Israel, 51 percent prefer Trump compared to 35 percent who prefer Biden, with 14 percent stating they have no opinion. I have seen no update since then.
We have seen Iran target the campaign of former President Trump. It is a safe bet that the mullahs prefer a Harris-Waltz victory to one of Trump-Vance because Trump ran the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Tehran which had nearly bankrupted the regime there until President Biden ended it and began not only to ease sanctions but unfreeze billions in Iranian assets in order to secure the release of hostages. Khamenei wants no part of Trump 2.0.
The Israelis? It’s a country deeply divided along political lines but almost wholly united in the need to win the war in Gaza and the one that looms in Lebanon and perhaps beyond (and which may have fully begun overnight). Given that Biden/Harris has played yo-yo with arms shipments to Israel even as it has continually attempted to restrain the Israeli Defense Forces, it’s a safe bet that most Israelis are hoping Donald Trump returns to the White House in January.
Many American voters could not care less about Israel or Iran. They are worried about the cost of groceries. Those folks are going to vote for Trump as the certain way to bring down the cost of food is to decrease the cost of producing food and the cost of transporting it to supermarkets. The way to do that is to unleash and fully support American domestic energy production. Trump has the majority of the inflation-driven voter locked up just as Harris has the abortion-on-demand voter locked up.
For those few percent of Americans who vote for national security and ‘peace through strength,’ and especially for those who pray for peace in Jerusalem and the region and for freedom for the Iranian people, the choice is clear: Donald Trump.
Hugh Hewitt is host of ‘The Hugh Hewitt Show,’ heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.