U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) is blaming the Israel-Hamas war on President Joe Biden, who he tried to paint as weak on defense, while also delivering an anti-LGBTQ dig.
Claiming “our enemies have concluded that America has a president who’s a bit of a weenie on national defense,” Senator Kennedy alleged President Biden is “not a defense hawk,” and his administration is “more interested in discussing whether a man can breastfeed than it is and talking about national security,” in a Fox News segment Tuesday. The right-wing cable channel’s hosts on Tuesday were urging House Republicans to elect a Speaker quickly, so Biden will look “weak.”
President Joe Biden is the first “American president to travel abroad to an active war zone that is not controlled by his own military,” as The Atlantic‘s Franklin Foer noted on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Biden will do it a second time, when he travels to Israel.
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President Biden will be “flying into an escalating conflict,” Foer wrote, and “will be, however briefly, the equivalent of a human shield, a temporary deterrent against a potential fusillade of Hezbollah rockets, because striking an American president is a risk that Iran’s proxy army in Lebanon will surely want to avoid.”
“During the 11 days of the 2021 conflict,” Foer also wrote, “Biden kept calling Netanyahu. As with the current war, Netanyahu’s strategic objectives weren’t entirely clear. Some in the Israeli military told their American counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza was a live option. The risks of that weren’t hard to see. But instead of lecturing Netanyahu, Biden conducted the calls in the spirit of a Socratic dialogue.”
“He would ask questions that forced Netanyahu to articulate his goals: How will this end? And how will you know when you’ve restored deterrence?”
Senator Kennedy on Tuesday may not have citing Foer’s Atlantic article, but he appeared to be mocking and misquoting numerous reports about Biden’s “Socratic method.”
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“Before making up his mind,” The New York Times reported in 2021, “the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic ‘journey’ before arriving at a conclusion.”
Last year Politico reported, “in meetings Biden pushes for every last possible detail – his own version of the Socratic method, or Socratic badgering depending on who you ask.”
Senator Kennedy appears to have twisted those reports into a bit of a stump speech.
In May, Senator Kennedy told an Iranian news outlet, “The Biden admin believes in peace, but they believe in peace for weakness. We’re in a bar fight with Putin, Xi and the Ayatollah. The Biden admin. wants to quote Socrates in the middle of a bar fight… that’s not how you win a bar fight.”
Senator @SenJohnKennedy told @IranIntl, “The Biden admin believes in peace, but they believe in peace for weakness. We’re in a bar fight with Putin, Xi and the Ayatollah. The Biden admin. wants to quote Socrates in the middle of a bar fight… that’s not how you win a bar fight.”
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) May 17, 2023
On Tuesday, Kennedy used nearly the same remarks on Fox News.
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“Xi and Putin and the Ayatollah think they can roll over [Biden] like my thunder on a summer night and that’s, I think, why we’re here,” Kennedy said Tuesday as he wrapped up his remarks. “Peace for weakness never works. These are hard men. They interpret being a nice guy, quoting Socrates to them, they interpret that as a weakness and that is what this administration has been doing. It’s been quoting Socrates to our enemies when we’re in a bar fight.”
Watch Kennedy’s remarks below or at this link.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) blames Biden’s “weakness” for the Israel-Hamas war:
“Our enemies have concluded that America has a president who’s a bit of a weenie on national defense, and Xi and Putin and the Ayatollah think they can roll over him like thunder on a summer night.” pic.twitter.com/VS8LOX3MR7
— The Recount (@therecount) October 17, 2023