President Joe Biden fielded several yelled questions from reporters on Friday as he boarded Air Force One, including one concerning Israel’s deployment of ground forces into Gaza. His response generated some misunderstanding and a momentary reaction.
One reporter questioned, “Should Israel delay the ground invasion until you can get more hostages out?” as CNN’s Kaitlan Collins wrote on her X account.
Biden said, “Yes.”
The Republican Party responded with a snarky retort.
Biden, who got to use the big stairs to board AF1 tonight, says “yes” when asked if Israel should delay its ground invasion.
He is now heading off to the beach. pic.twitter.com/kJYA09QNQY
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 21, 2023
But on Friday night, the White House took back Biden’s response.
Shortly after she first reported that Ben LaBolt, the director of communications for the White House, had claimed the president hadn’t heard the entire question, Collins tweeted. The White House released an extensive statement.
According to Peter Doocy’s account for Fox News, Biden seemed to understand all of the other questions quite well.
“Overnight, there was some real confusion here on the Biden beat as the president, who publicly supports whatever Israel wants to do against Hamas, appeared to confirm reports that privately he is telling the Israelis to pump the brakes,” said Doocy on Saturday’s Fox & Friends.
He recited the following passage from the official statement: “The president was far away. He didn’t hear the full question. The question sounded like, ‘Would you like to see more hostages released?’ He wasn’t commenting on anything else.”
Doocy said the explanation is “kind of puzzling because he could apparently hear the first question just fine.”
“But they have now fully walked that back,” Doocy added. “He is at the beach house in Rehoboth. We don’t expect to see him again for the rest of the weekend.”
The release of a very limited number of hostages by Hamas militants, according to former ambassador John Bolton, was a deliberate attempt to postpone Israel’s impending ground invasion.
The post White House In FULL PANIC – Quickly Switches Biden’s ‘Yes’ Answer appeared first on The Republic Brief.
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