Pelosi defends Biden’s Israel response from critics on left: ‘We’re going to speak out against Hamas’

The News

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the Biden administration’s response to the Israel-Gaza war and said she was confident that it wouldn’t be a problem as the president sought a second term next year.

“Many of the people who’ve said that they’re unhappy with the president on this have said, but we’re still going to vote — and largely, we’re going to vote Democratic,” Pelosi said, at a breakfast organized by the center-left group Third Way, focused on the threat that a No Labels third party campaign posed to Democrats in 2024.

“This is a horrible situation that kids and families in Gaza are subjected to,” Pelosi added. “But it was a horrible situation in Israel as well. And I don’t see how you’re going to say, ‘well, it was terrible, but there might be some Democrats, if we speak out against Hamas’ — no. We’re going to speak out against Hamas.”

Pelosi also suggested that people now angry with Biden would face a binary choice come next year — him, or Donald Trump, who had not only endorsed Israel’s counter-attack but promised to reinstate travel bans and pursue deportations of anti-Israel protesters if elected.

“Have we forgotten about the Muslim ban?” she asked. “One of the first things that what’s-his-name did when he became president was to put a Muslim ban on Muslims coming into the country.”

Pelosi brushed off concerns about the president’s bad poll numbers, including the majority of voters who say he’s too old to serve a second term. The No Labels effort, she said, was part of a “threat to democracy,” and the Democratic coalition would come together once the president made his case about how his record was improving peoples’ lives.

“I reject the age thing,” she said, “and he’s younger than I am.”

David’s view

Democrats are defending the president on multiple fronts — from low-polling primary challenges inside the party, from the centrist No Labels effort to take advantage of his unpopularity by drafting a third party candidate, and from a portion of the left that has dubbed him “Genocide Joe” for his support for Israel as it carries out attacks on Hamas in Gaza, with civilian casualties.

On Wednesday night, protesters marched to a Biden fundraiser in Minneapolis. Outside, local Muslim groups said that they would “abandon” Biden in 2024; inside Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, working with the peace group IfNotNow, stood up inside to demand that Biden support a ceasefire. Like Pelosi, Biden would only endorse a “pause” to the conflict to get hostages out.

“Should we have said something different about Hamas? No. That would not be possible,” Pelosi said. “You have to do what you believe. And we believe that 1400 people being killed in their homes, all the rest, was a bad thing. We also believe that there has to be a humanitarian pause or something to deal with the civilians.”