Did he just say the quiet part out loud again?
Right after Thursday’s State of the Union address, President Joe Biden stirred up a controversy when he was picked up on a hot mic while mingling with fellow Democrats, saying that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they would be having a “come-to-Jesus meeting.”
He told his gaggle not to repeat what was said before an aide intervened.
On Saturday, Biden sat down with MSNBC‘s Jonathan Capehart for an interview where the mistake-prone commander-in-chief made a blunder discussing the potential for a ceasefire in Gaza that was so revealing that Biden hastened to try to cover it up — and failed miserably.
The moment came as Biden talked about how he has been pushing for a ceasefire in the region until Israel creates a plan to evacuate the citizens occupying the remaining area of Gaza.
When asked who would benefit from a ceasefire, the president answered that the terrorist group Hamas would benefit more than anyone else.
(Americans might remember that it was Hamas, with its Oct. 7 murderous mass attack on southern Israel, that started the war in the first place.)
“Well, I think Hamas would like a total ceasefire across the board because they can then have a better chance to survive and maybe rebuild,” Biden stated. “But that’s not what … I think the vast majority of people think …”
Biden makes the blunder of answering whether and why Hamas would want a ceasefire.
He then notices his terrible blunder in saying the truth, and goes off on a tangent. pic.twitter.com/ypqX7H8D6o
— David Shor (@DYShor) March 10, 2024
Should Israel reject any ceasefire until Hamas is 100% wiped out?
Possibly realizing the obvious conclusion to be drawn from what he said — that a ceasefire only helps Israel’s enemy — Biden took a long pause before launching into a digression about how the rules of war had changed after World War II.
But by then, the damage had been done. Unwittingly, the president admitted that he’s well aware that pushing for a ceasefire in the region, even just a temporary one, will undoubtedly benefit Hamas far more than anyone else.
To add to the confusion, he claimed at another point in the interview that Israel’s threatened invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza would be the “red line” for Netanyahu, according to Reuters.
Immediately after that, he backtracked, claiming there is actually no red line and he is “never going to leave Israel.”
While the long pause in just the video above underscores concerns about Biden’s cognitive abilities, his answer made it clear that he is well aware of what a ceasefire in the region would mean.
The push his administration has made for a ceasefire as a humanitarian effort quickly falls apart when he admitted on air that doing so aids Israel’s enemy — an enemy sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state.
Attempting to paint it as anything else is deceptive and irresponsible.
Allowing Hamas to rebuild its forces will only lengthen the war in the long run, costing even more lives.
A ceasefire tramples on the lives that have been lost in the war so that liberals in Washington D.C. can pretend to feel good about themselves for “pushing for peace” or whatever self-serving reasons they believe. Biden, meanwhile, favors a ceasefire no doubt to improve his re-election chances by securing the swing state of Michigan.
War is not kind. It never will be.
But no political movement has a right to trample on the lives that have been lost simply to feed its members moral egos.
Hamas threatens both Israeli and Palestinian lives, end of story. Allowing it to exist any longer is putting more lives at risk than necessary.
Peace comes when threats are eliminated, not postponed.
