Instead of expressing gratitude that President Biden significantly helped blunt Iran’s attack on Israel yesterday, Republican Sen. John Kennedy suggested he’s an enemy of America for not escalating a conflict with Iran and possibly starting World War III.
Never mind that Biden “ordered aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region” and coordinated the response to the attack with Israel, as The New York Times reported. Furthermore, “American officials said U.S. fighter jets shot down more than 70 exploding drones in the attack, while two Navy warships in the eastern Mediterranean destroyed four to six ballistic missiles and an Army Patriot battery in Iraq knocked down at least one missile that passed overhead.”
We all know that had there been a Republican commander-in-chief, Kennedy and his GOP cronies would be celebrating his or her brilliant competence and attacking anyone who dared criticize.
But we also know that Republicans care more about political power than American unity (assuming they care about the latter at all with a Democrat in the White House). And we also know that Republicans have been salivating for a war against Iran for just about as long as I’ve been blogging.
Kennedy was just one of many Republicans who used yesterday’s events to attack Biden as weak, even as “the possibility of conflagration is far from over,” as The Guardian put it.
Naturally, Fox News is there to help!
On Fox News Sunday, Kennedy told anchor Shannon Bream, “it is clear that President Biden is being influenced by the Hamas wing of the Democratic Party,” apparently because he threatened to put conditions on aid to Israel and/or because he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. won’t support a counterattack on Iran.
Instead of calling out such outrageous rhetoric, anchor Shannon Bream helped legitimize it.
BREAM: Well, to that point you've got Senator Sanders there, one of your colleagues, who says in a piece in the Boston Globe this week - he said, not another nickel to Netanyahu. He says, "Does America want to be on the side of history of standing with people who are child killers and creating starvation?" I mean those are his words. He seems determined to block anything going to Israel.
Perhaps heartened by the validation, Kennedy continued bashing Biden for trying to infuse calm instead of lighting a match to the powder keg:
KENNEDY: Yes. And in the past 60 days, we have seen President Biden go wobbly in his support of Israel. And today, the White House has already leaked to the press early this morning that they're not going to participate in an Israeli response to what Iran just did.
Let me say it again. More sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem. My advice to the president today, for what it's worth, Mr. President don't. Stop it. Support Israel. With respect, go to Amazon and buy a spine online. Peace through weakness never works. Not with these hard, hard men.
Although I’m often critical of her, I have also said that Bream is one of the best of the lot at Fox. She’s a conservative who works for a propagandist but she is not one, herself. So, after promoting what was clearly a coordinated message, she offered some decent pushback:
BREAM: What about the issue of Rafah and the fact that there are more than a million civilians? Many of them are refugees from other areas within Israel. They were told to evacuate there. They're there now. We know that Hamas uses them as human shields but the fact is they're there. You know the U.S. is weighing in on this. We are cautioning them. We are also indicating we're not going to be supportive of a mission there. Israel says getting to Hamas is, you know, extinguishing an existential threat for them. But what are we to do about the civilian population caught in the middle of this thing?
KENNEDY: Move them into the Sinai Peninsula. Now, that would require the consent of Egypt. We send billions of dollars a year and aid to -- to Egypt. Egypt gets billions of dollars of free money from the international monetary fund that America controls. We need to sit down with it with Egypt and say we're moving the refugees into Sinai and we're going to do to Hamas what we did to ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Egypt will not like it but I think Egypt will understand why we're insisting on them doing that.
Now, if -- if the refugees don't want to move that is their choice. But there is a simple answer to this. If we just show a little bit of fortitude.
BREAM: Well, we know Egypt would not be for that plan as you said. They're not going to like it. We'll see what measure of -- what measure of leverage the U.S. have there.
KENNEDY: Of course, they're not, Shannon.
BREAM: Because they -- they feel that it may actually violate a treaty, they've got with Israel.
It should not surprise you that despite his willingness to put other American lives at risk, Kennedy seems never to have spent a minute in the military putting his own fanny on the line nor does he seem to have any children who have served. President Biden’s now-deceased son, however, was an Iraq War veteran.
You can watch Kennedy try to bully the U.S. into a new war below, from the April 14, 2024 Fox News Sunday.