‘Wait, Wait, Martha!’ John Kirby Tangles With MacCallum Over Biden’s Israel-Hamas Leadership in Tense Exchange

On Monday, Fox News host Martha MacCallum confronted National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby about reports of internal strife in President Joe Biden’s administration, and Kirby pushed back.

Biden has been getting heat for his leadership during the Israel-Hamas War, and a Sunday report in The Washington Post says some of those calls are coming from inside the house.

According to WaPo‘s Yasmeen Abutaleb and John Hudson, a previously unreported meeting took place earlier in November with “about 20 distressed White House staffers” who wanted to know what the Biden administration was doing about the rising number of civilian deaths in Gaza as a result of Israel’s war response to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7. The report cites divides among White House staff concerning Biden’s unwavering support of Israel, something that has cost Biden some of his progressive support.

When MacCallum asked Kirby about “that inner roiling and division that’s going on,” Kirby acknowledged that “the president understands that there are strong feelings all across the board here on this conflict between Israel and Hamas. And he respects that.”

Kirby continued, eager to explain what the administration had achieved with its current strategy:

[W]e have listened to staff members here at the National Security Council and across the administration from all different communities, from the Jewish community, from the Muslim community, Palestinian Arab community. We’re listening to everybody because they all have a view and we respect that and want to hear their thoughts. The president continues to work this issue very, very hard. And from the president’s perspective, and you heard him talk about this a little bit yesterday, what we’ve been doing has been having results.

Israel needs to be able to defend itself against a truly genocidal threat that Hamas poses. And so we’re going to continue to give them the tools and the capabilities to go after that threat, as well as lessons learned from our own experience in urban warfare against terrorists. We’re also working.

MacCallum tried to respond, but Kirby pressed on:

But wait, wait, Martha, we’re also working very, very hard, as we’ve been talking about for the last few minutes, to get hostages out, to get Americans out. Some 850 Americans have been able to leave thanks to our leadership across the Rafah crossing and then getting that humanitarian assistance in. So we are producing results, and we are urging the Israelis very, very stridently to be as careful and discriminate as they can in their targeting to minimize civilian casualties.

Watch the video above via Fox News.