CLAIM: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said: “There could have been more hostages had we not acted” to bring Americans home from Israel.
VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. No hostages were taken after October 7, despite Hamas terrorists still hiding in Israel.
DeSantis answered a question about Israel at the third Republican presidential primary debate in Miami, Florida, on Wednesday night by taking credit for sending planes to Israel a week after war broke out to bring stranded Floridians home to the U.S.
He did so to strike a contrast with the Biden administration, which struggled to provide a way home for Americans whose flights had been canceled. But many Americans stayed in Israel, where there was no additional risk of hostage-taking after October 7.
The Times of Israel noted DeSantis’s claim, with some puzzlement:
“We had Floridians that were over there after the attack. [US President Joe Biden] left them stranded. They couldn’t get flights out. I scrambled resources in Florida. I sent planes over to Israel, and I brought back over 700 people to safety. There could’ve been more hostages had we not acted,” DeSantis says. “We acted, and we saved lives.”
No one was kidnapped into Gaza after October 7, though, so it’s unclear why DeSantis says that the charter flights he helped organized prevented additional hostages from being taken into Gaza.
The Biden administration also organized charter planes and ships of its own to help evacuate American citizens after the war broke out.
Theoretically, there was a small risk: the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7 and murdered over 1,200 people, taking more than 240 hostages, had left behind a small number of infiltrators. But Israel was, by, then, on high alert.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.