Democrat Wants to Block Trump “Sale” of 40K Bombs to Israel
A top House Democrat has temporarily blocked the President Donald Trump’s plan to “sell” conventional weapons of mass destruction to Israel.
Representative Gregory Meeks of New York put a hold on the “sale” because he was concerned about Israel’s using them to continue the destruction of Gaza.
The deal would include more than three dozen one-ton bombs that really won’t be “sold” because Israel will “buy” them with hard-earned tax money confiscated from financially strapped Americans.
One loud voice opposing the “sale”: Tucker Carlson, who unbosomed himself of a long jeremiad on X.
The “Sale”
The $2.8 billion deal, The Washington Post disclosed, is “the largest single sale of the controversial munition in recent years,” a top official told the newspaper.
And the bombs will, of course, “be purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars,” including “40,000 bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds each, including 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military matters, the Post continued:
The sale also includes 20,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.
Among the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals, an MK-84 explosion sends metal fragments in every direction for thousands of feet, can rip through metal and thick concrete, and often creates large craters in the earth.
So Israel is “buying” 80 million pounds of the most destructive conventional weapons on the planet.
The scam on the American taxpayer, the Post disclosed, involves “Foreign Military Financing, in which the United States provides the money that Israel uses to buy the weapons.”
In other words, the weapons are free, at least to Israel. Americans pay the price.
Israel has used the bomb “hundreds” of times in Gaza and Lebanon, the Post reported, and the country “has drawn criticism for routinely dropping MK-84s in zones it designated as safe for civilians in Gaza.”
“They do like to use them a lot when they’re trying to target any building,” said Trevor Ball, a former explosive-ordnance-disposal technician for the U.S. Army. “If Hezbollah or whoever is in a building, an MK-84 will bring down the whole building.”
Nicknamed the “hammer” by U.S. pilots in the first Gulf War, it is the only munition that President Joe Biden’s administration stopped sending to Israel during the Gaza war out of concern about the killing of Palestinian civilians. That involved suspending a single shipment of the munitions in the spring of 2024. The policy was immediately reversed by President Donald Trump in January 2025, his first month back in office.
“Given the way Israel conducted its air war in Gaza and, to some extent, in southern Lebanon, there are real concerns about how such weapons would be used in densely populated areas,” said Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group. “That’s assuming that you have valid military targets to start with because there are concerns about what Israel deems to be valid military targets.”
Meeks Blocks “Sale”
Far-left Democrat Meeks has told the administration nothing doing. He announced yesterday that he will block the giveaway because of “concerns that those munitions would not be used in accordance with U.S. and international law,” a House Foreign Affairs Committee news release says.
Said Meeks (Freedom Index lifetime grade, 16 percent):
The Trump administration’s proposed sale of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, some of the most destructive munitions in our arsenal, raises grave, unresolved concerns about how these munitions could be used in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon.
The Trump administration has not provided sufficient assurances that these weapons will be used by the Netanyahu government in accordance with U.S. law and with appropriate protections for civilians. I therefore will not clear this sale at this time. This decision does not diminish Congressional support for Israel’s legitimate defense needs; it reflects Congress’s responsibility to ensure that U.S.-funded weapons are used lawfully, responsibly, and with meaningful safeguards for human life.
While Meeks can slow down the deal, he likely can’t stop it, ABC News noted: “Once [the sale] is formally notified to Congress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio can bypass the normal congressional review process by making an emergency determination that the transaction is an urgent national security interest.”
Carlson Levels Trump Over “Sale”
Podcaster and former Trump backer Tucker Carlson explained the significance of the “sale.”
The shipment “amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs,” he wrote on X:
That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel.
MK-84s are unguided, free-fall bombs that contain 945 pounds of Tritonal — 80 percent TNT and 20 percent aluminum powder. On detonation, that much Tritonal reaches 4,940 to 5,840 degrees, about half the temperature of the Sun’s 10,000-degree surface.
The bomb can blast a crater 50 feet wide and 36 feet deep, and penetrate 15 inches of metal or 11 feet of concrete.
It kills anything within 400 yards of the explosion.
The BLU-117 is externally identical to the MK-84 but contains a different explosive.
Carlson argued that Israel doesn’t need these weapons of mass destruction to carry out “periodic skirmishes” in Lebanon or continue its campaign in Gaza.
