House Speaker Mike Johnson said he felt betrayed by President Biden’s threat to withhold US weapons shipments to Israel and expressed hope the remark could be chalked up to a “senior moment.”
“I hope — I believe he’s off script,” Johnson (R-La.) said in an upcoming episode of Politico‘s “Playbook Deep Dive” podcast.
“I don’t think that’s something that staff told him to say. I hope it’s a senior moment, because that would be a great deviation in what is said to be the policy there.”
Citing concerns over the mounting civilian death toll in the Jewish state’s war against Hamas, the 81-year-old commander-in-chief told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a primetime interview Wednesday night that the US would stop sending munitions to Israel if it invades the densely populated southern Gaza city of Rafah.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden said of US arms shipments.
“It’s just wrong. We’re not gonna — we’re not gonna supply the weapons and artillery shells used.”
Over GOP objections, Johnson worked with the Biden administration and House Democrats to pass last month’s $95.3 billion aid package for the war-torn nations of Ukraine and Israel and provide for the defense of Taiwan.
In response to the bill’s passage, several of Johnson’s Republican colleagues — led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — mounted an unsuccessful attempt to jettison the House speaker from his leadership post, which he’s held since the bruising ouster of his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), last October.
Speaking just hours after he survived the attempt to strip him of the gavel, Johnson told the podcast hosts that he heard reports of plans to slow weapons shipments to Israel even before Biden’s comments on CNN, but had been assured by Biden administration officials that the reports were incorrect.
“And my reaction honestly was: Wow, that is a complete turn from what I have been told even in, you know, recent hours,” the speaker said in response to hearing Biden’s unexpected about-face.
“I mean, 24 hours ago it was confirmed to me by top administration officials that the policy’s very different than what he stated there. So I hope that’s a senior moment.”
Johnson said Biden’s interview comments flew in the face of promises he made to him as they hammered out a deal to secure the package’s passing.
He said the White House told him the delayed shipments Biden was referring to were from “earlier weapons tranches” and had “nothing to do with the supplemental aid package that you all passed.”
However, Johnson still said he considered Biden’s statement a betrayal., given the political risk he undertook.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told The Post Thursday that Johnson’s claim of an abrupt turnabout by Biden were “simply false.”
“Senior administration officials had already made multiple public statements about Rafah similar to the president’s, including that we are also ensuring Israel gets every dollar appropriated in the supplemental,” Bates said. “For example, hours before the President’s interview, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave congressional testimony that aligned with him.
“To be fair, we understand the Speaker has a lot to keep up with. Joe Biden is the only president in our history to have ordered the American military to actively defend Israel from a foreign attack, and the only president to have literally stood with Israel – on Israeli soil – during wartime.”
Additional reporting by Steven Nelson
