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.”
But Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, another member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that Biden deserved accolades.
“Obviously, President Biden has put in enormous amount of work to get to this day,” he told The Independent. “To the extent that there was some coordination between both administrations, that's obviously rare, a rarity. But President Biden's putting the security of the country and our allies first.”
Murphy joined a coterie of Democratic senators who in December joined Independent Sen Bernie Sanders in an amendment to withhold military aid to Israel. Another one of those senators, Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia, had repeatedly criticized the Israeli government’s approach to its war against Hamas.
“I want to look at details,” he told The Independent. But “boy, getting hostages home is so gratifying. And I do think it opens up other opportunities for looking for more long-term resolution.”
Senator Peter Welch came out early in support of a ceasefire, even before his fellow Vermonter Sanders, and warned The Independent that the war in Gaza could hurt Democrats in the election.
“You guys figure that out,” he said in terms of who deserved credit between Biden and Trump, but expressed his joy at the end of the hostilities.
“So happy,” Welch said. “The hostages will come home. They can get humanitarian aid in, stopping the bombings. Glorious news.”
The ceasefire agreement to return hostages will take place over six weeks, which means that Trump will be in charge of leading it. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, one of the first Democrats to come out in support of a ceasefire, had a simple reply about whether Trump would handle it properly.
“Trust and verify,” he told The Independent, referring to a saying made famous by Ronald Reagan. During his presidency, the Gipper kept a plaque on his desk that read: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
But this is Washington, and credit is capital. Biden and Trump spent the past five years tussling and now they will have to split the trophy of a ceasefire.
The tussle about whether Trump or Biden deserves the accolades is a fitting end to Biden’s presidency. Polls show people credited Trump with the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden signed, largely on the back of Trump loudly declaring multiple weeks “infrastructure week.”
Voters blamed Biden for rampant inflation while they also loved Trump sending out two of the three stimulus checks that created pent-up demand and helped boost inflation. They wanted Biden blamed for the increase in the flow of migrants at the US-Mexico border even as Trump blew up a bipartisan border agreement to reduce that flow.
Soon Trump will preside over meetings following up on the Mideast negotiations. Republicans will tout him as the man who perfected the art of the deal. All the while Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who served as a chief diplomat during his vice presidency, will have his legacy intertwined with the deaths of Palestinians that split his party.
