Antony Blinken, U.S. secretary of state under former President Joe Biden, stated that U.S. President Donald Trump deserves thanks for the Israel-Hamas peace deal that he negotiated. But the nation’s former top diplomat claimed that Biden ought to get most of the praise.
“In Gaza today, the guns are largely silent. If all goes as planned, the remaining Israeli hostages will return home. Palestinians will get the relief they desperately need and deserve,” Blinken stated on Saturday. “Nothing can erase the pain and loss of the past two years. But there is real hope of building on this step to finally end the war.”
“President Trump and his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, deserve our collective thanks for producing this ceasefire and the renewed possibility of lasting peace,” the former secretary of state said in a series of social-media posts, in which he accused the Jewish state of moving the goalposts and noted the “terrible cost to Palestinian civilians caught in a crossfire they did not start and were powerless to stop.”
“It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken stated.
Critics mocked the former U.S. secretary of state and his suggestion that Trump drew on a plan that Biden pioneered.
“This is delusional,” stated Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Once again, President Trump is cleaning up an epic mess left by Biden, Blinken,” former U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan and former White House adviser Brett McGurk, stated Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation.
“They have the temerity to seek recognition for the chaos they manufactured to a fawning media that applauded it,” Greenway said. “Alice, and her friends in Wonderland, would be aghast. The Cheshire Cat would be proud.”
The conservative commentator and radio host Guy Benson called Blinken’s claim “preposterous.” Sean Spicer, a former White House press secretary who is now a radio host, stated, “Let me guess, you think Hunter is a good artist too.”
“Imagine a former secretary of state, on whose watch the war started and his administration couldn’t end, trying to take credit for President Trump’s success after his failed playbook was thrown away,” stated Emil Michael, U.S. under secretary of war for research and engineering.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, en route to Israel, that “everybody knows that’s a joke,” of Blinken crediting the Biden administration.
“They did such a bad job. This should’ve never happened,” the president said. “Everything they did was the opposite of what you should’ve done.”
