Trump Uses Support for Israel to Revive Travel Ban Talk

Former President Donald J. Trump, while addressing the fighting in Israel on Monday, attempted to stoke fear of attacks taking place on U.S. soil and suggested that a travel ban like the one he implemented as president could stop such violence.

Mr. Trump’s comments, at a campaign rally in Wolfeboro, N.H., echoed the anti-Muslim rhetoric that he successfully tapped during his 2016 presidential run, harnessing sentiments that have lingered in the post-9/11 era.

While discussing a series of surprise attacks launched over the weekend by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Mr. Trump promised to “stand strongly with the state of Israel” and said, to cheers, said that he had “imposed a strict travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists” out of the United States.

He called to “reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries.”

“The bloodshed and killing that we saw this week will never, ever be allowed to happen on American soil,” he said. “Except for the fact that we have now allowed tens of thousands of probable terrorists into our country.”

He claimed, without evidence, that the “same people that attacked Israel” are entering the United States through its southern border, a similar message asserted by at least two other Republican presidential candidates — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy — over the weekend.

During his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.

The order that his administration imposed shortly after taking office in 2017 banned travel into the United States for people from seven countries, most of them predominantly Muslim, though the order went through several iterations that changed the final list of countries. Iran, one of the affected countries, has funded Hamas.

Mr. Trump earlier revived discussions of a travel ban in July, saying in Iowa that he would impose a travel ban “even bigger than before.”