Railing against Speaker Boehner's decision to invite Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress on his concerns about Iran, Hardball host Chris Matthews sneered that the Ohio Republican essentially attempted to "sneak" the Israeli Prime Minister into the country with the president completely unawares, and that all to curry favor with "crazy right-wing" evangelical Christians.
Here's the relevant exchange from Wednesday night's Hardball:
MATTHEWS: I have never heard of a Speaker going along with a secret plan to invite somebody to speak to a joint meeting. All they had to do was call up the president and say, I know you're not going to like this but I got the Prime Minister of Israel coming over here. He didn't do it! He never, he never, he just went and cut the deal, invited the guy and all the sudden Obama's caught with a fait accompli, a partisan move, what looks to be a Likud partisan move by Bibi, a move by the ambassador to help him, it looks like, and all to the detriment of a bipartisan foreign policy. All to the detriment.
[...]
MATTHEWS: It's two weeks before the election, he comes, they sneak him into the country. They do this without--
Former Gov. GEORGE PATAKI (R-N.Y.): He's not sneaking into the country. He's the sitting prime minister of Israel.
MATTHEWS: Has there ever been in your lifetime someone invited to talk to a joint meeting of the Congress without the president knowing it was being done? I've never heard of that.
Former Gov. GEORGE PATAKI (R-N.Y.): I can't tell you that. I don't know the answer.
MATTHEWS: Then why are we setting precedent here?!
STEVE KORNACKI, MSNBC weekend anchor: It is sort of extraordinary, and I think the bigger sort of political story is--
MATTHEWS: I know the politics here. First you've gotta meet the guy once he's here because then you're snubbing him. But this was a snub perpetrated by the ambassador to Israel, from Israel, not to Israel, and the Speaker of the House, they put this thing together, and it's official now, they never told the president.
[...]
MATTHEWS: By the way, this isn't about Israel or Jewish people or supporters of Israel, this is about the crazy right-wing evangelicals that they're selling this too.
But of course the actual facts of the matter conflict with Matthews's simplistic narrative.
To begin with, Speaker Boehner extended the invite "on behalf of the bipartisan leadership" of both houses of Congress, on January 21, 2015, the day after President Obama's State of the Union address. The invite was extended for Netanyahu to speak on February 11, 2015, but on January 22 Netanyahu asked and Boehner accepted a revised date of March 3, to coincide with Netanyahu's planned visit to Washington for the 2015 American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference (March 1-3).
What's more, according to an official White House transcript of a January 21 press gaggle -- shortly before noon Eastern on board Air Force One -- White House press secretary Josh Earnest noted that the president had in fact been notified of the February 11 invite earlier that day by Boehner (emphases mine):
Q Can you address Speaker Boehner’s invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu to come and address a joint meeting of Congress next month to talk about Iran?
MR. EARNEST: Darlene, I've seen those news reports. I'll say a couple things about it. The first is that we were notified of the Speaker’s invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning shortly before the official announcement. As it relates to the Prime Minister’s decision to travel to the United States and deliver those remarks, I'll tell you that we're going to reserve judgment on that until we've had an opportunity to speak to the Israelis about what their plans are for the trip and what he plans to say. So at this point, we'll withhold judgment until we've had the opportunity to do that.
Q Will he be visiting the White House on that trip?
MR. EARNEST: Well, again, we haven't heard from the Israelis directly about the trip at all, and so we'll wait to hear from them about what their plans are and what he plans to say in his remarks to Congress before we have a decision to make about any meeting. Obviously no invitation has been extended or no ask has been made because we haven't talked to them about this trip.
I mean, it is -- you’re sort of highlighting something that is interesting about this, which is that the typical protocol would suggest that the leader of a country would contact the leader of another country when he’s traveling there. That certainly is how President Obama’s trips are planned when we travel overseas. So this particular event seems to be a departure from that protocol.
But again, the President has spent more time and on more occasions talked to Prime Minister Netanyahu than any other world leader. So I am confident that at some point White House officials will have an opportunity to talk to their Israeli counterparts about the Israeli plans are. Then we can go from there.
Q It sounds like you're -- the White House is annoyed.
MR. EARNEST: No, I -- look, I think what we're saying is that we're going to reserve judgment on the trip until we've had an opportunity to talk to them about what exactly they’re planning.
Q Is it appropriate for him to use a speech to Congress to lobby on behalf of sanctions that are being considered right now?
MR. EARNEST: It's not entirely clear to me that that's exactly what they’re planning to do, though, again, some of that is because we haven't heard from them about what exactly they’re planning to do. I can tell you when it comes to Iran sanctions, the President has been crystal clear about what he believes our strategy should be. Right now there is a diplomatic option that is being pursued. The only reason that that diplomatic opening was created is because this administration worked closely with Congress to put in place a sanctions regime that has crippled the Iranian economy. And that sanctions regime has only been successful because the administration has worked closely with our diplomatic partners around the globe to implement those sanctions.
So what the President has said is that if Congress were, as some advocate, to pass legislation right now in the midst of these diplomatic negotiations that imposes additional sanctions on Iran, what it could do is it could cause two things to happen. One, it could cause the talks to falter. And the reason for that is we reached an agreement early on in these talks that we wouldn’t put in place additional sanctions in return for the Iranians rolling back certain key aspects of their nuclear program. So passing additional sanctions at this point would be a pretty blatant violation of the deal in the minds of this broader international coalition that has been the key to the successful implementation of the sanctions regime. So what the President has said is that for right now, we should allow this diplomatic opening to continue to be pursued.
Clearly Earnest was annoyed with both the Boehner invite and the prospect that Netanyahu would accept -- he hadn't, at that point, accepted the invite nor altered the date.
But as you can see, the initial White House position was much more cautious and Boehner was not so much the target of the frustration as was the Israeli government.
On January 23 -- one day after Netanyahu accepted the invite with a revised date of March 3 -- Earnest directed most of his displeasure at the Israeli government, particularly for shifting the date of the speech closer to the Israeli general election. Earnest also admitted that Boehner was perfectly within his rights as presiding officer of the House to extend an invite to a foreign dignitary to speak (emphases mine):
Q And as you know, there’s been a lot of discussion this week about the President’s relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu after that invitation from the Speaker to speak before Congress. On a scale of 1 to 10, how irritated is the White House with Prime Minister Netanyahu? (Laughter.)
MR. EARNEST: Well, Jim, let’s unpack this a couple of different ways. The first is --
Q One being low, 10 being high. (Laughter.)
MR. EARNEST: Right, I was going to say it’s hard to tell what the measure is there. I mean, the first thing -- let me restate the thing that I said before, which is that it is consistent with longstanding practice for the leader of a foreign government, when they’re planning to visit the United States, to contact and coordinate that visit with the leader of the United States. And so the invitation that was extended and the acceptance of that invitation did represent a departure from protocol.
But, ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the Speaker of the House to make decisions about the floor schedule of the House of Representatives. Certainly if we had the opportunity to weigh in on that schedule a little bit more, we would welcome that opportunity and probably make a variety of changes.
The other thing that we have made clear, Jim, is that the President at this point does not plan to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu on this visit that apparently is scheduled for March. The reason for that is that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit comes about two weeks before the Israeli election. And this administration goes to great lengths to ensure that we don’t give even the appearance of interfering or attempting to influence the outcomes of a democratically held election in another country. And for that reason the President will not be meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits the U.S. in March.
But as all of you have noted on a number of occasions, the President has spent more time talking to Prime Minister Netanyahu than any other world leader. And the reason for that is simply that the United States and this President recognizes that we have a clear national security interest within our alliance with Israel. And that kind of commitment that we have to their national security is unshakeable. It certainly transcends partisan politics. And it’s something that, despite some of the differences of opinion that we have with the current Israeli Prime Minister, it doesn’t undermine our commitment to Israel’s security.
Matthews doesn't have to like how everything went down, but he has an obligation to honestly report how it did rather than spew conspiracy theory-laced invective and passing it off as hard-hitting political commentary.
