House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that President Biden’s threats to halt arms shipments to Israel are a “100% political calculation” amid lagging poll numbers that spell trouble for the president’s reelection bid.
Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said the president is actively defying Congress already by pausing a weapons shipment to the Jewish State after lawmakers passed a $96 billion foreign aid package that included billions for weapons for Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza.
“I believe it’s 100% a political calculation,” Mr. Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I think we can all see that. It’s the same reason that he’s making the political calculation not to call out antisemitism on the campuses, not to call out and speak without equivocation about the good versus evil here, the right versus the wrong.”
Mr. Biden has come under heavy scrutiny for pausing a shipment of bombs to Israel earlier this week, and then announcing that he would not continue to supply weapons to the Jewish State if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his campaign in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have taken refuge.
The White House has since clarified its stance on Thursday, with White House National Security Spokesperson Johnson Kirby telling reporters that Israel would still get everything it needed to defend itself from Hamas.
He contended that only an offensive weapons shipment of around 3,500 bombs had been paused out of concerns that the arms would lead to “widespread destruction in densely populated areas.”
Mr. Johnson said the president is trying to “micromanage the war” by conditioning the supply of weapons to Israel.
“For Joe Biden to do this, he is going against what he told Congress, what his top officials in the White House specifically told me that they would do, and it’s just catastrophic policy,” he said.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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