GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis pledged to strip the United Nations of its funding if elected to the White House after it passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian pause and a release of hostages Wednesday.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution calling for the release of hostages held by the militant group Hamas and for urgent humanitarian pauses, but it did not include language that condemned Hamas. DeSantis went after Biden for allowing the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. to abstain from the vote instead of vetoing it.
The Florida governor, a staunch supporter of Israel, then vowed to defund the U.N. if he clinches the presidency.
“That Joe Biden doesn’t have the moral conscience to have his Ambassador to the UN veto this nonsense that doesn’t even condemn Hamas while he is dining with Xi in San Francisco shows you who he seeks to placate. This ends in my admin,” DeSantis wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“We will unequivocally support Israel, take names, make it clear those countries who are hostile to Israel risk their relations with us, and defund the UN,” he said. “No longer should American taxpayer dollars support this corrupt, morally bankrupt, hotbed of antisemitism that empowers our enemies and coddles dictators and the worst human rights abusers.”
His remarks came after fellow GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who was U.N. ambassador under former President Trump, pledged to reduce U.S. funding to the organization if elected to the White House. Speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Haley agreed with the statement that the U.N. has been “historically anti-American and antisemitic.”
“The only thing is we would defund the U.N. as much as possible. The only reason, Sean, you don’t get out of the U.N. is we’re one country of five that has a veto,” Haley said when pressed on whether the U.S. would “get out” of the U.N. if she wins the presidency.
“And the number of things we were able to stop China, Russia and Iran from doing with that veto matters, and so you keep bad things from happening. But we don’t have to pay at the level that we’re paying, and we don’t have to be in any of those other organizations,” she said.