White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Sunday distanced himself and President Obama from an anonymous U.S. official who said that “there will be a price” after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation to speak before the U.S. congress.
“There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave,” the anonymous official told Haaretz on Friday.
NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked McDonough about the quote in Haaretz on Sunday.
McDonough said that he doesn’t know who gave the quote to Haaretz and that it doesn’t represent the views of the White House.
“I can guarantee that it’s not me, not the president, and not what we believe,” he said.
McDonough explained that Obama will not meet with Netanyahu during his upcoming visit since it will take place soon before the Israeli elections.
“We think that, as a general matter, we, United States, has stayed out of internal politics in the countries of our closest allies. That’s true whether it’s Great Britain, where we just recently had a visit from Prime Minister Cameron a full four months before their election, or in Israel,” he said.
Todd also asked McDonough if he agreed with former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, who said that Netanyahu should cancel his trip to the U.S.
McDonough said he would “leave that” to Oren and Netanyahu.
Watch the interview via NBC:
Stand strong. It’s our country which was insulted.
The White House should be expelling GOP operative Ron Dermer.
Your post made me look further into Ron Dermer, and his background defines “complicated” including a brother who was the Democratic mayor of Miami Beach who helped to re-elect gwb. But since Dermer has not been an American citizen since 2005 he seems to be in closer alliance with Netanyahu than to this country. Can the administrative ask that Dermer be recalled because on the face of it his stance seems to verge on something close to treason and what are the chances Israel will do so?
We can ask to have him recalled or we can simply have him expelled by saying he is not welcome.
I believe that Dermer’s appointment was a direct slap at Obama. It was Netanyahu’s way of saying that a genuine GOP operative was now Israel’s official voice in the US.
Ron Dermer has been called Bibi’s brain, in much the same way as Karl Rove was Dubya’s brain.
ugh… distressing to see a return to this backtracking – esp when the netanyahu/boehner stunt was done for one reason only – to destroy any possibility of further negotiations with iran. and, of course, the utter contempt they both have for obama.
bibi’s visa should be pulled.
They’re perfectly strong, certainly not backing down in any way from the veto threat on the sanctions bill or freezing out Bibi on his visit. Publicly playing it above politics or the personal has been quite effective thus far; let other Dems, anonymous officials, and the Israeli press keep doing the rest.
And yeah, I’d love to see Dermer booted; let’s see what ends up happening.