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.”
