Washington was abuzz Sunday following a Politico report alleging that President Joe Biden called besieged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a bad f**king guy.”
Though the White House flatly denied the salacious allegation, the story caused a stir Inside the Beltway, with many worried about the implications of the development.
Fox News host and talk radio personality Mark Levin went further, posting on social media “Actually, Biden you're the f**king piece of sh*t, not Netanyahu and not Trump.”
Despite the administration's denials, Biden, who has known Netanyahu for decades, clearly dislikes the Israeli leader, according to Politico's Jonathan Martin:
…Like everyone in the administration and any Democrat with a pulse, he's deeply suspicious of Benjamin Netanyahu, and privately has called the Israeli prime minister a “bad fucking guy,” according to people who've talked to the president. (Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said, “the president did not say that, nor would he,” adding that the two leaders have “a decades-long relationship that is respectful in public and in private.”)
Biden's deep-seated fear: that Netanyahu is eager to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East, a conflict that would ensure American weapons keep flowing to the region, troops soon follow and, in the maelstrom, international pressure on him to agree to a Gaza cease-fire and his domestic political difficulties both dissipate.
Not that the president would ever say such things in public. However, he's starting to take steps demonstrating to pro-Palestinian activists that he hears their complaints.
White House officials told me it was purposeful Thursday, before Biden made his first trip to Michigan this year, that the president used his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast to decry hate against Arab Americans and offer prayers for those “held hostage or under bombardment or displaced,” while simultaneously releasing an executive order levying sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have committed acts of violence on Palestinians.
Martin's report comes as polls show 50% of likely Biden voters label the Gaza war a genocide.
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