White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been invited to meet President Joe Biden in the U.S., but not specifically the White House.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu had appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to discuss his country’s judicial reforms, and told host George Stephanopoulos that Biden had offered an invitation to visit the White House.
Netanyahu won Israel’s most recent democratic election late last year. But Biden delayed in inviting him to visit, as he had done soon after each of his predecessors took office, for reasons that were unclear.
In March, after Netanyahu paused his judicial reform legislation, Biden said publicly that he would not invite Netanyahu to visit because of the issue, contradicting an assurance made by U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides.
Biden doubled down earlier this month, saying that he would not meet with Netanyahu because of “extreme” members of his cabinet. Biden then invited Israel’s ceremonial president, former left-wing politician Isaac Herzog, to visit. The contradiction reinforced the impression that Biden was interfering in Israeli domestic politics. Finally, days before Herzog’s visit, Biden called Netanyahu, where a potential visit was discussed.
“President Biden, in the last conversation we had, invited me to the White House in the fall. I think it’s in September, but we’ll finalize a date. Look, I think our relations are very strong,” Netanyahu told Stephanopoulos.
But Jean-Pierre disputed that: “What I can say is they both agreed to meet in the United States later this year. … I just want to be very clear, it was a conversation that they both agree that it would be in the United States.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.