John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, defended U.S. President Joe Biden, who was photographed carrying an anti-Israel book as he exited a bookstore in Nantucket, Mass., over the weekend.
During a press gaggle aboard Air Force One, as Biden traveled to Luanda, Angola, on Monday, a reporter asked Kirby and Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, about the president’s decision to carry The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi as he left the bookstore.
“Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the president was seen exiting a bookshop with a copy of a book by a Columbia historian, Rashid Khalidi, who has referred to the Palestinian conflict essentially as being an ethnic cleansing operation,” the reporter asked. “Why did the president choose to read that book at this point in his presidency?”
Kirby said, “When you say something like that, it reminds me of what Mark Twain said, that a man who refuses to read good books has no advantage over a man who cannot or won’t read those books.”
“I can’t speak to why the president made that particular purchase. Wasn’t with him, haven’t had a chance to ask,” he said. “But he reads broadly, and he’s fascinated by history and the lessons of history, and where that can take us going forward.”
“So that doesn’t surprise me that he would go into a bookstore and get a book of history, particularly about the Middle East, to try to imbibe and keep learning,” Kirby added. “He really does believe in speaking, learning, thinking broadly, and that’s what that tells me.”
“He’s actually reading it?” the reporter asked.
“I don’t know,” Kirby said.
