Analysis: Whose ceasefire is it anyway?. President Joe Biden had barely finished speaking about the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas when a reporter asked him whether he or Donald Trump, who will succeed him next week, deserved credit for the ceasefire.
Biden immediately turned around with a grin and asked: “Is that a joke?” — then walked away. The president, who leaves office in five days, may have been grinning, but it’s a question everyone in Washington had to ask. Democrats and Republicans immediately jockeyed to pitch whether Biden or Donald Trump deserve the lion’s share of the credit.
Many Biden administration officials who resigned from the government to protest Biden’s support for Israel credited Trump for the end of hostilities. Not surprisingly, the former and incoming president took a victory lap, and Republicans in the Senate cheered him on.
“People respect strength,” Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told The Independent. He and Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota specifically cited how Trump warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages weren’t released.
Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma flatly told The Independent that Trump deserved “all of it,” in terms of credit. He was less than kind about how much Biden deserved. “You tell me how much negotiating he did,” Mullin said, referring to the president. “He didn’t.”.
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