US President Donald Trump said that he was "shocked" to hear the testimonies of a delegation of recently released hostages that visited him this week.
A delegation of hostages including Doron Steinbrecher, Eli Sharabi, Naama Levy, Iair Horn, Omer Shem Tov, and Keith and Aviva Siegel, visited Trump at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump asked them if there were any kind people in Gaza out of all of the people they encountered, and Trump said that all of the former hostages said no.
"I said, 'Were there any people that were like, kind?' I was shocked," Trump told reporters during a conference in the Oval Office.
"The answer was nobody; there was nobody. Just the opposite."
טראמפ בהלם: שאלתי את שורדי השבי אם היה מישהו אחד שהיה נחמד אליהם בעזה - הם אמרו לי: "לא" pic.twitter.com/AIWNs1YJDJ
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) March 8, 2025
What did the hostages tell Trump?
He said that the hostages told him that they received repeated verbal, physical, and emotional abuse.
"They'd be slapped and punched. One man broke his ribs; he couldn't breathe for a month. It was brutal."
"And Hamas, did some of them wink at you and say 'Don't worry, you're gonna be ok,' or give you a piece of bread?"
The hostages told him no to all of this.
“I was so surprised because you’d think that there’d be a couple of people that would be kind, that would say ‘you’re gonna be okay,’ but they had none of that.”
Trump met with the delegation of former hostages on Wednesday. The delegation included Eli Sharabi, Keith and Aviva Siegel, Naama Levy, Doron Steinbrecher, Iair Horn, Omer Shem Tov, and Noa Argamani.