White House–curated stories of performative outrage and feigned helplessness provided cover for an administration arming death on an industrial scale.
by Adam Johnson and Othman Ali
Part 4 - Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden
A key companion to Helpless Biden is Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden. This is any report, analysis, or opinion that paints Biden as secretly upset, outraged, having stern words for Netanyahu, or privately sad or anguished about civilian casualties.
NBC News, 11/15/23, “The gap between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government over Gaza’s future is widening”
CNN, 12/14/23, “Unprecedented tensions between White House and Netanyahu as Biden feels political price for standing with Israel”
Axios, 1/14/24, “Biden ‘running out’ of patience with Bibi as Gaza war hits 100 days”
The Washington Post, 2/11/24, “Biden moving closer than ever to a breach with Netanyahu over war in Gaza”
CNN, 3/8/24, “How a brief exchange in a call explains the strained Biden-Netanyahu relationship”
Associated Press, 3/10/24, “Biden cajoles Netanyahu with tough talk, humanitarian concerns but Israeli PM remains dug in”
Politico, 3/22/24, “From ‘I Love You’ to ‘Asshole’: How Joe Gave Up on Bibi”: “After decades of building a ‘close, personal’ friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden has had it with the Israeli prime minister. Now he’s hitting him hard—and it may be working.”
The New York Times, 5/11/24, “The Long, Tortured Road to Biden’s Clash With Netanyahu Over Gaza War”
Axios, 6/18/24, “White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video”
The New York Times, 8/8/24, “Killing of Hamas Leader Fuels More Tension Between Biden and Netanyahu”
Our source analysis shows that nearly 98 percent of the sources of these articles are Israeli officials or ex-officials, Biden aides (typically anonymous), or Biden allies in the think-tank world. The most common source for these articles are “[White House/US] officials” (50), “Israeli officials” (12), and President Biden himself (12).
Despite the fact that there have been dozens of these articles, ostensibly detailing how angry, disappointed, or “concerned for civilians” Biden is behind closed doors, no reporter finds it suspicious that Biden refuses to use any of his available leverage to stop the thing he’s allegedly so upset about. This is what makes this genre non-journalistic: Nothing is actually happening. There’s no policy change, no material shift in the facts on the ground, no reporting on anything that will affect Palestinians in Gaza. They are conspicuous displays of supposed consternation and hand-wringing, not a reporting of events with consequences for real people. This genre of article is defined by self-serving leaks, supposed personality disputes, and what is, in effect, mind-reading by reporters.
Is Biden upset? Is he angry with Netanyahu? The reporters have no way of knowing beyond hearsay and phone calls Biden knows are being recorded and reported. But more importantly, the story—such as it is—never goes anywhere. In Theater 101, one is taught that the difference between a plot and a sketch is that a plot evolves: It has beat changes; characters grow; the story propels forward. Sketches, by contrast, are the same gag three or four times to draw out the absurdity of the situation, then everyone gets out in under five minutes. Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden is fundamentally a sketch: It never escalates; no one is ever sanctioned; weapons are never withheld (despite claims to the contrary)—nothing ever changes. Biden is just always vaguely mad and/or sad. But, unlike a sketch where the bit is done three or four times, we’ve now seen this skit performed dozens of times for reporters.
The most consistent stenographer of Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden is Axios’s Barak Ravid, who has written 25 different versions of it, quoting either US officials directly or a string of anonymous “US officials”—often as alleged scoops—affirming that Biden and White House officials are some variation of “breaking with Netanyahu,” “increasingly frustrated,” “running out of patience,” or “deeply concerned” about civilian casualties. Ravid, himself a former member of Unit 8200, Israel’s “secretive cyber warfare unit,” was awarded for his suite of Fuming/Deeply Concerned reporting with the White House Correspondents’ Association’s award for journalistic excellence in April, during which he glowingly posed for pictures with the president.
To make these nonstories seem newsier, Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden reports are often peppered with direct or implicit claims of a just-around-the-corner “break” between Biden and Netanyahu. “Biden moving closer than ever to a breach with Netanyahu,” The Washington Post pronounced in February 2024. “After decades of building a ‘close, personal’ friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden has had it with the Israeli prime minister,” Politico’s Michael Hirsh told us in March 2024. The New York Times’ Peter Baker informs his readers that Biden “has finally had it with an Israeli leadership that he believes is not listening to him.”
Alas, no break ever materialized. Baker even indicates that Biden’s new supposedly angry posture was delivering results. “To some degree, the Israelis have responded,” Baker told Times readers on May 11, 2024, “despite more than three months of vowing to invade Rafah, they have yet to actually do so beyond limited strikes.”
Three days after Baker’s report, the IDF entered the center of Rafah, quickly turning the city that once held 275,000 residents “into a ghost town,” as NBC News put it. And, as of August 2024, Data from the Decentralized Damage Mapping Group showed, according to Bellingcat, “that almost 44 percent of all buildings in the Rafah governorate in southern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.” Even the most pro-Biden analysts agree that Netanayu steamrolled through Biden’s supposed “Rafah red line.”
In retrospect, we should ask: What was the purpose of Baker’s Fuming/Deeply Concerned Biden report just days before Israel invaded Rafah? Was it to accurately reflect a meaningful change in policy brought about by genuine US pressure, or was it to help distance the White House from the inevitable reports and images of death and destruction that were about to come out?
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