President Biden has really done it now. Seth Meyers and the President stepped out to get ice cream together and you’d have thought Biden was charged with 91 felony indictments by the reaction. But no, that’s his likely opponent, Donald Trump.
Biden’s crime is… eating ice cream, while answering a question about the hopeful ceasefire deal.
While visiting Van Leeuwen ice cream parlor at 5:30 PM, next door to 30 Rock, President Biden was asked about the ceasefire deal and he said it could happen in Gaza by the end of this weekend: âMy national security adviser tells me that weâre close, weâre close. Itâs not done yet. And my hope is that, by next Monday, weâll have a ceasefire.â
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Biden: My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire pic.twitter.com/McOts5EzGf
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 26, 2024
Believe it or not, people are enraged that: Biden would eat ice cream by himself (he wasn’t by himself, but eating ice cream alone is hardly weird), would “announce” a ceasefire while eating ice cream (this hoped for ceasefire has been in the works for a while and he was responding to a question and again), and generally speaking find this so egregious that they can’t bear it. How dare he. This is the last straw.
Huh. It’s obvious that facts aren’t really in play here, but still: President Biden was not actually *eating* the ice cream while he answered.
The President also spoke about the hoped for deal during his interview with Seth Meyers, saying in part, “There is a path forward, with difficulty⦠the hostages being held must be released. And then we’ve got a — and it’s a principle in agreement — there’ll be a ceasefire while that takes place. Ramadanâs coming up and there’s been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out…
âI think that if we get that temporary ceasefire, we’re going to be able to move in a direction where we can change the dynamic.â
This isn’t exactly breaking news, as U.S. negotiators were working on this last week. For example, Reuters reported on February 23rd about a hoped for ceasefire and release of hostages held by Hamas, as well as the Biden administration’s pivot away from Trump’s policy by saying that Israels’ expansion of settlements into occupied West Bank is not consistent with international law:
The head of Israelâs Mossad intelligence service met representatives from Qatar, Egypt and the United States in what appears to be the most serious push in weeks to stop the fighting and release the hostages held by Hamas. The militant groupâs leaders held separate talks in Cairo and are waiting to hear what comes from Paris. Palestinian officials said Benjamin Netanyahuâs plan for Gaza once the war ends would be doomed to fail. Israel said it would attack Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought shelter, if they cannot reach a hostage deal.
A reversal: Israelâs expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank is inconsistent with international law, the Biden administration said. This is a return to the US policy of four decades that the Trump administration did away with in 2019.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Biden had put down his ice cream to respond? Then he would be accused of being “too old” to hold his ice cream cone and talk at the same time.
If a ceasefire is really what some of these folks want, then complaining about Biden “announcing it” (when the rest of us already knew it was in the works?) because they don’t like that he’s eating ice cream while doing so kind of gives away the game that there is nothing Biden can do right in their eyes. And that’s their right! Dissent is not only allowed (at least unless they get their way and Trump is in office), but encouraged in a free country.
Still, the ice cream police are giving Obama’s dad jeans rage.
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