President Joe Biden praised Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Friday for his speech Thursday in which he demanded new elections in Israel to replace Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the war.
Biden answered a reporter’s question about the speech as he hosted Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at the White House.
He said: “Senate Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staff, that he was going to make that speech, and he, I am not going to elaborate on the speech. He made a good speech. And I think he expressed a serious concern, shared not only by him, but by many Americans.”
As Breitbart News reported, Schumer took to the Senate floor on Thursday to demand that Israel hold new elections to replace Netanyahu, whom the Majority Leader described as an “obstacle to peace.”
The speech was poorly received in Israel, with Netanyahu and some — not all — of his political rivals criticizing Schumer’s attempt to interfere in Israel’s democracy, especially in the middle of a war against genocidal terrorist enemies.
Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main rival, said: “The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate Chuck Schumer is a friend of Israel, who helps her a lot even these days, but he made a mistake in his statement. Israel is a strong democracy, and only its citizens will determine its leadership and future. Any external intervention in the matter is incorrect and unacceptable.”
Schumer’s speech came days after Biden told MSNBC that Netanyahu was “hurting” Israel more than “helping” it.
Those remarks came in the wake of a visit by Gantz to Washington, which reportedly had not been cleared by Netanyahu.
Later, reports emerged that U.S. intelligence agencies said they “expect” protests to topple Netanyahu and force new elections.
A senior Israeli official responded to those reports by suggesting that Biden should topple Hamas, not Netanyahu.
But reports also emerged this week that the Biden administration is “slow-walking” arms deliveries to Israel, perhaps to appease calls for a ceasefire and an arms embargo from left-wing Democrats and Arab- and Muslim-American voters in key swing states in the 2024 presidential election.
Senate Democrats have also declined to pass billions of dollars in emergency military aid for Israel, saying that aid to Israel must only be passed if accompanied by aid for Ukraine, among other spending priorities.
The lack of ammunition means that Israel could lose the war against Hamas, and could find itself unable to fight off Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terror group that has been shelling northern Israel intermittently since October.
In recent days, Netanyahu had also emphasized that only Israeli voters had the right to choose their elected leaders.
Ironically, Netanyahu has recovered in some polls of Israeli voters, and tops his likeliest rivals as prime minister.
As for Biden’s claim that Schumer’s position was shared by “many Americans,” a recent Harvard-Harris poll suggested the opposite — that Netanyahu is viewed favorably by American voters, and that the vast majority of American voters support Netanyahu and back his approach to the war over Biden’s.
There were reports that the White House had tried to distance itself from Schumer’s remarks after he made them, but President Biden’s statement Friday indicates that the White House fully supports calls to oust Netanyahu.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.