President-elect Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that “all hell will break out” if Hamas does not agree to release its remaining hostages by the time he returns to the White House on Jan. 20.
Hamas and Israel have been negotiating the release of 34 hostages who have been held in Gaza since the October 7, 2022 attack on Israel. Trump’s Middle Eastern Envoy Steve Witkoff has also been working on a Gaza hostage deal by January 20th.
Wikoff told reporters during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago that “we’re making a lot of progress” in the hostage negotiations and that he was “really hopeful that by the inaugural we’ll have some good things to announce.”
Trump said he didn’t want to hurt the negotiations, but “if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell is going to break out in the Middle East and it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good frankly for anyone.”
Trump added that the terrorists should have returned the hostages a long time ago.
“They should have never taken them!” he declared. “There should never have been the attack of October 7.”
The president-elect noted that many of the hostages have already been killed and he often hears from tearful parents begging for the return of their loved ones.
“I’ve had mothers coming to me, fathers, crying,” he said.
Trump said he remembered seeing a young woman thrown into the back of a car by her ponytail “like a sack of potatoes.”
“I said ‘what happened to her?'” The parents replied “sir, she’s dead,” he recalled.
Trump told reporters that Witkoff the “right person” to make a deal because he’s a skilled negotiator but added: “If the deal isn’t done before I take office, which is now going to be in two weeks, all hell will break out in the Middle East. OK?”
Trump first threatened Hamas in early December that there would be “HELL TO PAY” if a deal was not made.
“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 2. “But it’s all talk, and no action!”
Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!
During the press conference Tuesday, the president-elect also commented on Joe Biden’s new ban on offshore drilling, his various legal cases, and the Panama Canal.
Trump also reiterated that he’ll be issuing “major pardons” for defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, something he has vowed to do on his first day in office.
Interestingly, Trump said his administration would look into the role of FBI informants, as well as Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah in the events on Jan. 6.
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