House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) slammed President Joe Biden on Wednesday for threatening to withhold offensive weapons to Israel if it launches a planned ground operation in Hamas, the city close to Gaza where Hamas’ last stronghold is and where many Palestinians have taken refuge.
During an interview with POLITICO, Johnson said Biden’s willingness to withhold weapons to Israel is a betrayal, adding that he hoped the president did not actually mean to convey U.S. policy and was only experiencing a “senior moment.”
In another interview on “Fox and Friends,” Johnson said that Biden’s signal that his administration might pause shipments of weapons to the U.S.’s top ally in the Middle East does not align with the will of Congress.
“He’s defying the will of Congress and he’s defying what his own top officials in the White House assured me in writing and verbally before that supplemental was passed and even in the days since,” Johnson said, adding, “This idea of withholding weapons to Israel as a condition of somehow, you know, Joe Biden wanting to micromanage their war effort over their defensive effort is catastrophic policy.”
“It would be devastating to our closest ally in the region, and it would go directly against the will of what the members of this body voted on just several days ago, so they have got to answer the American people in answer to us and we’re on that right now,” the House Speaker said further.
Biden, during a CNN town hall, expressed his opposition to Israel’s plan to launch an incursion in Rafah.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem,” he said.
“But it’s — it’s — it’s just wrong. We’re not gonna — we’re not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells used that have been used,” he added.
