With the lone possible exception of Friday, Monday marked perhaps the week’s lone White House press briefing and Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan certainly made waves for his decidedly anti-Israel pivot to help his boss President Biden stave off further hemorrhaging of pro-Hamas Arab voters (such as arguing Jews meddle in U.S. elections) and telling Peter Doocy his question was akin to the phrase “when did you stop beating your wife”.
The question that drew Sullivan’s pompous bit concerned an NBCNews.com story about how Biden has reportedly felt increasingly angry about the state of his reelection fight. Doocy relayed one passage revealed that “when President Biden was told his handling of the war between Israel and Hamas was starting to affect his poll numbers, the quote is, ‘he began to shout and swear.’”
“So, when he does that, is he shouting and swearing about Netanyahu or about Hamas or about his poll numbers,” Doocy asked.
The snide foreign policy hack immediately went personal: “This is the ‘when did you stop beating your spouse’ question because I don’t think he ever did that.”
Reacting as most would to this sudden turn, Doocy reacted with an incredulous look on his face and an, “excuse me?”
Of course, no one followed up on Sullivan’s arrogant answer that runs counter to the years of reporting about Biden having a less-than-clean mouth:
[W]ell, you — you used that as the premise of your question, which is when he does that, he — I’ve never seen him do that. Shout or swear in response to that. So, from my perspective, that particular report is not correct.
Doocy’s other question prior to this was relatively benign: “Why did President Biden wait so long — why did he let 32 days pass between phone calls with Prime Minister Netanyahu?”
Sullivan brushed this aside, arguing “our teams are in contact every single day at every level” with Biden being briefed “daily — twice daily, sometimes nine times daily update on what is going on, and he reserves his calls for the prime minister for when he believes there’s a key strategic moment that needs to come forward” and “has never declined a phone call from Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
The Biden aide had assistance in peddling anti-Israel nonsense during the briefing, such as these questions wondering why America’s making it “so hard” to stand up to Israel, asking “[w]ho is responsible” for starving Gazans, and inquiring as to the Biden regime’s message to Muslims as they mark Iftar during “this particularly difficult year” (click “expand”):
NADIA BILBASSY: The head of UNRWA, [inaudible] Lazzarini, said today that he was denied entry to Gaza, the day, as you mentioned, the report that Northern Gaza is facing imminent famine. So, is this an issue that you’re raising with the Israelis? And on another question, there is 5,000, according to the ICRC, prisoners that’s been missing. Nobody knows anything about them. They’re being held by the Israelis, including doctors and journalists, and the arrest of one of our colleagues at Al Jazeera this morning as well. What can you do to push the Israelis to at least declare where are these prisoners so their families know where they are? Because most of them, according to our knowledge, there are civilians.
(....)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So, why is it that it seems so hard for this administration to stand up more firmly to Benjamin Netanyahu? He has been ignoring many of your requests. He’s now threatening to launch an offensive in Rafah and the answer from the White House so far has been pretty soft, and the U.S. are still sending weapons to Israel. So, it seems like there is a big cautiousness from the White House.
(....)
AURELIA END: Coming back to Israel and the humanitarian situation in Gaza. We are now — we have now 1 million people faced with the risk of starvation, and aid is not getting in at the levels necessary to help those people. Who is responsible for that? And during this call, has — was there any kind of commitment from the part of the Israeli Prime Minister to let more aid come into Gaza?
(....)
ANITA POWELL: [W]hat is the White House planning for Iftar this year? And what is your message to Muslim Americans about this particularly difficult year?
Doocy’s Fox colleague Edward Lawrence had the penultimate exchange of the briefing with questions to the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre: “When will the President hold another news conference so we can ask a question of him without having helicopter noise or jet noise in the background?”
Jean-Pierre fumbled her way through what should have been a simple no:
I don’t have anything to — for you to share. Obviously, the president — President, As you just say — as you was [sic] just saying, the President takes questions pretty regularly, enjoys having engagement with all of you. I don’t have a press conference to lay out for you at this time.
“But is there — is there talk of one,” Lawrence wondered, to which Jean-Pierre doubled down.
On a different topic, the press corps were so bent out of shape concerned about Gazans (and the Hamas members embedded in their population) that it took until the 29-minute mark (29:27) of the nearly 54-minutes briefing (53:49) for anyone to bring up the roughly 1,000 Americans trapped in the hellscape that is Haiti.
Worse yet, 12 reporters — ABC (x2), AFP, Al-Arabiya, AP, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN, Reuters, Today News Africa, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and one we couldn’t identify — passed on Haiti.
Thankfully, NBC’s Allie Raffa broke that by raising this concern to Sullivan (click “expand”):
RAFFA: The State Department announced this weekend that more than 30 Americans had been evacuated from Haiti, but they were evacuated from a northern city, not Port-au-Prince. And today, the State Department said that more than a thousand U.S. citizens have reached out asking about their options for departing the island. Are there plans for the U.S. to do more specifically out of the Port-au-Prince area?
SULLIVAN: So, first, my understanding is that more than 1,000 Americans have been in touch with the embassy to seek more information. Some number of those have asked for information about departing. Others have asked for information about how to remain safely or, if they choose to depart in the fu — in the future, how they might do so. So, the thousand is really a broad universe that encapsulates a number of different categories. Second, as you noted, we did have our first evacuation flight out of Cap-Haïtien. More than 30 U.S. citizens were on it. And we will look to continue to operate out of Cap-Haïtien for people to be able to leave from there and then, third, of course, if we determine that there is a secure way to move American citizens who want to leave Haiti out of the Port-au-Prince airport or out of some other route, we will do so. There’s active planning for that. There’s a- — active analysis of — of the risks of doing so. But we will stay in close touch with every American citizen who wants to be in touch with us in Haiti and continue to look for options to ensure their safe passage out of the country should they choose to leave.
To see the relevant transcript from the March 18 briefing (including an important question about White House/Big Tech coordination from ABC’s Selina Wang in light of a Supreme Court case argued Monday), click here.
