Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told constituents gathered at a town hall meeting last week that the war in Gaza “should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” invoking the U.S.′ nuclear strikes on Japan that brought an end to World War II.
“Get it over quick,” Walberg said of the Gaza war.
HuffPost reviewed a video of the full meeting, a portion of which was clipped from a YouTube video and posted to X, formerly Twitter. According to Walberg’s congressional website, he held a town hall event Monday morning at the Dundee Village Hall.
His office told The Detroit News that the remark was “a metaphor to support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas.”
Walberg’s comments were in response to a question posed by someone at the meeting about U.S. troops being deployed to Gaza. Since Hamas militants’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Israeli Defense Force has engaged in a relentless bombing campaign that has displaced the majority of Gaza’s residents and killed more than 30,000 of them, including many women and children. The U.S. has continued to send bombs, fighter jets and other resources to help the Israeli effort.
President Joe Biden has been under huge pressure to fund humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, where everyone is at risk of famine. Israel has refused international calls to open more land-based routes for aid deliveries.
In response, the Department of Defense announced earlier this month that it would build a pier for aid shipments off the coast of Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea. The logistics involved in building the pier, however, have led to questions about how to prevent U.S. troops from being put in harm’s way.
In Dundee, a man in the audience said that he had spoken to a soldier who was going to be sent to help build the pier next month.
“Why are we spending our money to build a port for them?” the man asked.
“It’s Joe Biden, is the reason. We need to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. I don’t think we should,” Walberg responded. He said that the port plan amounted to sending U.S. troops into Gaza, “where we shouldn’t be.”
Walberg continued: “I don’t think any of our aid that goes to Israel to support our greatest ally, arguably maybe in the world, to defeat Hamas and Iran and Russia, and probably North Korea’s in there, and China, too, with them helping Hamas — we shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick. The same should be in Ukraine. Defeat Putin quick.”
In a statement to the Detroit News, Walberg spokesman Mike Rorke said that the congressman “vehemently disagrees with putting our troops in harm’s way.”
“He has great empathy for the innocent people in Gaza who have been thrust into this situation due to the attack carried out by Hamas leaving 1,163 innocent civilians dead,” Rorke said, adding that Hamas should return the hostages it took in its Oct. 7 attack.
“During his community gathering, [Walberg] clearly uses a metaphor to support Israel’s swift elimination of Hamas, which is the best chance to save lives long-term and the only hope at achieving a permanent peace in the region,” Rorke said.
Rorke did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Saturday.