We reported on Joe Biden's claim about a possible ceasefire by next Monday.
Biden Says He Expects Israel to Bow to Demands for a Ceasefire Within a Week
But as I noted in reporting on his Seth Meyer's interview, Biden was eating ice cream, and he appeared to not know what he was saying even as he said it.
"Well, I hope by the beginning of the weekend," Biden said
"I mean the end of the weekend. At least my national security advisor tells me that we're close."
So the media ran with that. Unfortunately, it's Joe Biden, so they should have known better.
That's a big problem when you can't even trust if he knows what he's talking about from one minute to the next — when he can't get leaders' names right or even the year right.
When Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu was asked about it, he said he was "surprised" by what Biden said. That doesn't bode well for Biden's claim being hinged in any kind of reality.
Netanyahu further said in a statement later on Tuesday that he had been "leading a political campaign whose purpose is to curb the pressures intended to end the war before its time" and that the Harvard-Harris poll indicates that 82 percent of the American people support Israel. "This gives us two more strength to continue the campaign until the complete victory," he said.
That sounds like it might be a shot at Biden's effort to pressure him.
It turns out even Hamas and Qatar (who has been brokering talks) shot down Biden's claim about a potential temporary ceasefire. One Hamas leader, Ahmad Abdelhadi, said they weren't agreeing to any deal that didn't have a permanent ceasefire. The Qataris who have been brokering talks said that while they were optimistic, there hadn't been any breakthroughs.
In other words, Biden seems to have had no idea what he is talking about.
So the press asked NSC spokesperson John Kirby if he could explain what Biden was talking about.
Kirby said he couldn't speak for why Netanyahu was surprised, ducking the question about why Biden said it. He also claimed that Biden was being kept up to speed on the issue. Yet it doesn't appear that Biden is "up to speed" when he gets something like that so wrong.
Translation: Hey, he was just misleading everyone, no harm, no foul. It just happened to be on the eve of the Michigan primary with its substantial Muslim population. So you can take your pick: complete nonsense exaggeration because he's out of his mind and/or trying to convince voters to vote for him with the claim.
Either way, if we can't rely upon our alleged leader having some relation to reality — if other countries can't rely upon what our leader is saying — we are in deep doo.