Donald Trump is demanding that the Biden administration get tough on Iran for threats against the former president’s life.
“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country, in this case, Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities, and the country itself, to smithereens,” he said at an event in North Carolina on Wednesday.
For good measure, he reiterated, “We’re gonna blow it to smithereens.” That way, he said “there would be no more threats.”
He made no mention of Israel’s extensive airstrikes on Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon along Israel’s northern border. Nor did he mention his ex-pal Mark Robinson, the self-described “Black Nazi” Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, who has been banished by his own party, including MAGA World, for his outrageous comments and behavior.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a Tuesday statement that the former president was briefed earlier that day on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.” Intelligence officials confirmed they had briefed his team on Iranian threats, but did not provide further details.
Iran has also been meddling in the election by hacking the Trump campaign, federal law enforcement officials have said. Iranian actors reportedly sent hacked campaign materials to Democrats and to news organizations.
The former president expressed outrage that Iran’s president had a security detail guarding him for his visit this week to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, even as Trump remains vulnerable to the country’s threats.
After a bullet hit Trump’s ear during an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, the Secret Service spotted another would-be assailant on the outskirts of his Florida golf course earlier this month. The former president was not injured, but the incident highlighted how the specter of danger continues to haunt him.
While Trump thanked lawmakers of both parties for agreeing unanimously to a bill boosting candidates’ security in the wake of the two attempts on his life, he accused Joe Biden of being an absent president.
“Who is our president right now?” he asked.
Both Biden and Kamala Harris called Trump after the latest incident in the Sunshine State and expressed their opposition to political violence. Still, the lack of strong leadership, Trump asserted, as well as foreign enemies who want to keep him from returning to the White House and making America great again, require Americans to “pull together to thwart these attempts.”
