President Biden made no major news but avoided major gaffes as he handled a number of hot-button foreign policy issues during his much-anticipated solo press conference Thursday evening.
With much of the focus on domestic politics and Mr. Biden’s physical and mental status, the president at one point mistakenly referred to his military advisors as his “commanders in chief.” But he also gave lengthy answers on questions such as relations with China, the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, the unity of NATO and what he said was Russia’s largely failed invasion of Ukraine.
White House officials said the 58-minute solo press conference demonstrated Mr. Biden’s deep familiarity with foreign policy issues, although some of his answers did raise alarm bells with fact-checkers.
The president repeated a favorite line detailing what he said was his long personal association with Chinese President Xi Jinping that critics say greatly overstates their time together, and claimed he had always been “totally opposed” to a U.S. military mission in Afghanistan after the initial invasion of the country in 2001.
The limited number of polls of Palestinian opinion in the West Bank also show surging support for the Hamas militant group since its rampage through southern Israel in October set off the current fighting in Gaza, despite Mr. Biden’s claims Thursday that Hamas’s popularity had fallen among Palestinians.
Mr. Biden hinted there had been progress in recent days in talks over a U.S.-sponsored cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas while expressing some veiled but pointed frustration with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli government, he said at one point, had “occasionally been less than cooperative” about getting humanitarian aid to struggling residents of Gaza.
“I know Israel well, and I support Israel, but [Mr. Netanyahu’s] war cabinet is one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of Israel,” Mr. Biden said. “There’s a lot of things that, in retrospect, I wish I had been able to convince Israelis to do.”
Mr. Biden said he had warned Mr. Netanyahu against an Israeli occupation of Gaza, saying Israel could still go after Hamas leaders after a cease-fire.
The president at times seemed frustrated that the relatively drama-free NATO gathering, where he hosted scores of world leaders, did not get the appreciation he felt it deserved. Mr. Biden’s verbal flubs, most notably briefing referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” at one point Thursday, overshadowed the gathering’s substantive achievements in many press accounts.
“I thought it was the most successful conference I’ve attended in a long time,” Mr. Biden said at one point in the press conference. “Find me a world leader who didn’t think it was.”
• David R. Sands can be reached at dsands@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.