Keir Starmer<\/a> on Monday, Trump said Israel bore a \u201clot of responsibility\u201d for what he described as \u201creal starvation\u201d in the territory, directly contradicting Netanyahu\u2019s insistence that nothing of the sort has taken place. <\/p>\nTrump added that the images and reports emerging from the enclave \u201ccannot be faked\u201d.<\/p>\n
And when asked if he agreed with the Israeli leader\u2019s remarks about concerns of mass starvation in Gaza being overstated, he replied: “I don’t know. I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly because those children look very hungry.”<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t the first time the president had been moved to action by images of children in peril delivered by his favorite form of entertainment. <\/p>\n
Months into his first term, in April 2017, he addressed reporters about images of carnage from the now-defunct Assad regime\u2019s use of chemical weapons \u2014 Sarin nerve gas \u2014 against the town of Khan Sheikhun. <\/p>\n
\u201cI will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me \u2013 big impact,\u201d Trump said while speaking in the White House\u2019s rose garden, just steps from the Oval Office. \u201cMy attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much \u2026 You\u2019re now talking about a whole different level.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal \u2013 people were shocked to hear what gas it was. That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Days later, he ordered a series of cruise missile strikes against targets in Syria, his first use of military force since assuming office three months earlier. <\/p>\n
Trump also appeared to reverse himself on a foreign policy matter earlier this month when he overrode top Pentagon officials who\u2019d put a hold on American weapons shipments bound for Ukraine, citing images transmitted out of Kyiv in the aftermath of Russian drone attacks against civilian targets such as apartment buildings. <\/p>\n
A Trump administration official who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity said the president makes decisions based on what he believes to be the best information available to him at any given time and said his invocation of horrific televised images shows he cares about protecting children.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a grandfather, he\u2019s a family man, and images of hurt or starving children anger him just as much as any in the country who has a heart,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n
![\"Trump](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI259020929.jpeg\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Trump announced more US aid to Ukraine alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte earlier this month (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s reversals on aid to Ukraine and on the need for Israel to allow more food into Gaza have another factor in common.<\/p>\n
In each case, the president has acknowledged the influence of First Lady Melania Trump in his decision-making process. <\/p>\n
When he ordered the Pentagon to resume shipping defensive weapons to Kyiv this month, he described a conversation he\u2019d had with his Slovenian-born wife following a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. <\/p>\n
“I go home, I tell the first lady, ‘I spoke to Vladimir today, we had a wonderful conversation.’ And she says, ‘Oh really? Another city was just hit,'” he said.<\/p>\n
And on Tuesday as he returned to Washington aboard Air Force One, he told reporters that his wife thinks the situation in Gaza is \u201cterrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe sees the same pictures that you see, that we all see, and I think everybody, unless they’re pretty cold hearted, or worse than that, nuts, there’s nothing you can say other than it’s terrible when you see the kids,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Megan Mobbs, the daughter of Trump\u2019s Ukraine envoy General Keith Kellogg, told The Telegraph that when it comes to the First Lady, Trump \u201cdeeply values her counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a very, open, conversational relationship and she is one of his closest advisers,\u201d said Mobbs, who currently lives in Kyiv running the RT Weatherman Foundation humanitarian mission.<\/p>\n
The former model\u2019s influence on the president might come as a surprise given that unlike most who\u2019ve filled the unpaid, unofficial role of first lady, Mrs. Trump is understood to spend most of her time in New York, where she and the president\u2019s son, Barron Trump, attends NYU.<\/p>\n
The White House would not discuss the first lady\u2019s schedule or whereabouts, but a source close to the president cautioned against discounting her influence based on where she may or not be on any given day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-321525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114979799586321482","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2223419975.jpeg\")
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