‘A bullet in your damn forehead’: Watch Trump’s incoming national security adviser get tough on U.S. hostage takers

JERUSALEM – The incoming National Security Adviser Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., told conservative talk-show host Ben Shapiro there’s a new sheriff in town with the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, and any terrorist organization which thought about holding U.S. hostages captive should think long and hard about whether the costs would outweigh the benefits.

Waltz pointed out the four remaining U.S. hostages held in Hamas captivity in Gaza have now been there for longer than the 444-day U.S. embassy siege in Tehran in February 1979.

“That’s totally unacceptable, and I think writ large, there have never been enough consequences,” says Waltz. “That’s what we need to be talking about with these people. [If] You take an American … there is going to be all hell to pay. There are going to be nothing but consequences for you financially, and maybe even a bullet in your damn forehead.”

“The next time you think about it … a lot of these groups are going to say, ‘Whoa, it’s just not worth it under Donald Trump,'” he surmised.

MUST WATCH: Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz speaks with @benshapiro about how Israel has changed the Middle East since 10/7 and how vulnerable Iran is pic.twitter.com/ArD3bYAGuT

— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) December 22, 2024

Waltz added there seemed to be a perverse incentive structure in place, which far from deterring terrorists seems to encourage them to chance their arm and take hostages, including Americans. He stated clearly in the interview that if the cost of capturing U.S. citizens became prohibitively high – which he expected to be the case under President Trump – then they would stop doing it.

Away from the Palestinian issue – although linked – Waltz claimed President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was a disaster, and particularly a foreign policy standpoint. He drew attention to how close Israel and Saudi Arabia were to inking a normalization deal following the successful signing of the Abraham Accords in Sept. 2020, between the Jewish state and four Arab/ Arab-majority countries.

Indeed, the incoming NSA drew a direct causal link between the proximity of a normalization deal between Saudi and Israel, and Iran’s decision – despite its protestations of being kept in the dark – of lighting the fuse for the Oct. 7 attacks.

“We’ve had a lot of good discussions with the Saudis [about] normalization,” the top Trump aide notes, adding that he is still reviewing the issue.

And to that point, Israeli news outlet Haaretz published an article last week, which suggested Saudi Crown prince Muhammad Bin Salman, who is de facto ruler of the kingdom, dropped his previously stated intransigence about a pathway to Palestinian statehood being a precondition for normalization with Israel.

REPORT

Israel and Saudi Arabia have reached a breakthrough in their normalization negotiations.

According to Haaretz, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is no longer insisting on a clear timetable for establishing a Palestinian state and is instead willing to… pic.twitter.com/CZRuja5VmF

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 17, 2024