Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Nov. 30, 2023
“Though the administration insists that it still wants Hamas defeated, it is also declaring that it opposes any real effort to clear the terrorists out of southern Gaza as Israel has begun to do so in the northern part of the Strip.”
This isn’t supposed to be the president with the social-media problem. For four years, President Donald Trump bypassed the press by tweeting his thoughts to more than 87 million followers on what used to be called Twitter. Trump’s feed was must-reading for anyone who followed politics or just wanted a good show as he shared his unfiltered thoughts about just about anything. The chattering classes hated it, considering it unpresidential and crude.
But Trump’s willingness to be outrageous or to go for his opponent’s jugulars only endeared him to his supporters.
Social-media chaos at the White House was supposed to be a thing of the past once President Joe Biden took the oath of office. Biden has his problems, many of which revolve around his apparent physical decline as he heads deeper into his 80s. But unfiltered or ill-considered posts on X (as Twitter is now called) aren’t supposed to be one of them.
Yet a post on X published on Biden’s personal account (@JoeBiden), as opposed to the official presidential one (@POTUS), at 5 p.m. on Nov. 28 had the potential to turn the Middle East upside down. It read: “Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace. To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can’t do that.”
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