Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down on President Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to “take over” the Gaza Strip, saying “all options” are on the table.
Hegseth declined to get ahead of the commander-in-chief about what the United States would or wouldn’t do, instead telling Fox News host Laura Ingraham in an interview on Wednesday that Trump is an “outside-the-box thinker” who is willing to “overturn the apple cart.”
Trump made shockwaves on Tuesday when he said the United States could potentially “take over” the Gaza Strip, level it and rebuild it at some point in the future. The 47th president told reporters he sees a “long-term ownership position” of the enclave and believes it could be the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
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Hegseth, a former “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host, said it’s Israel’s job to eradicate Hamas and once that happens, the status of Gaza is a conversation Trump is willing to have.
“You bring peace by eradicating terrorists who seek the destruction of Israel. That’s how you bring peace, and so I support that,” he said. “What happens after that is a longer conversation, and hopefully in every case, the president would acknowledge this — you don’t want to have to use American boots at all if you don’t have to. That’s my preference.”
Trump told reporters at the White House that the United States would “own” the Gaza Strip and “be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.” When asked whether U.S. troops would be sent to Gaza, the president said, “As far as Gaza is concerned, we’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that.”
Joey Jones, a Fox News contributor and retired Marine bomb tech who lost his legs in an IED explosion in Afghanistan, said he’s “not for” Trump’s proposal of American troops being responsible for unexploded ordinances.
“My intuition, my belief, is that this is a part of his chess, and this is his way of getting places like maybe Saudi Arabia or Jordan to say, ‘No, no, no, you can’t have this. Let us do it.’ Maybe it is that simple. But you know, I’m a hypocrite if I don’t stand up and say, ‘Hey, wait just a minute,’ I just voted for you because you said we wouldn’t get involved with more wars,” Jones explained on “The Will Cain Show.”
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Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have rejected Trump’s calls to relocate Palestinians as the enclave is being rebuilt.
Hegseth told “The Ingraham Angle” that the president has talked about other countries potentially being willing to take in refugees.
“We need new ideas in a place where it hasn’t been disrupted for a long time, so there are people that would be caught off-guard. That’s something the president’s willing to manage,” he said. “But those of us that were there at the press conference were not surprised that he’d think differently, because that’s what he got elected to do.”
