English (US) 
9 months ago
88
President Biden refused to concede in a recent interview that it was a "widely shared sentiment" he was allowing a "genocide" in Gaza in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks.
MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart confronted Biden with a quote from a recent New York Times opinion column titled "Arab American fury toward Biden."
"As bad as Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was, and him putting a travel ban on five Muslim countries, he wasn’t overseeing and actively arming a genocide," Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in an interview with New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow.
'UNCOMMITTED' PROTEST VOTE AGAINST BIDEN DRAWS TENS OF THOUSANDS ON SUPER TUESDAY
"What's your response to that widely shared sentiment?" Capehart said, quoting from Blow's column.
"It's not widely shared," Biden told Capehart. "You guys make judgments you're not capable of making. That's not what all those people said. What they said was they're very upset, and I don't blame them for being upset. There are families there, there are people who are dying and they want something done about it. And they're saying, ‘Joe, do something, do something.'"
"But the idea that they all think it's genocide, that's a different situation," he added.
"I can fully understand, can't you?" Biden asked Capehart.
"It's understandable [why] they feel that way," Biden said of voters who may have family members who have been affected by the war in Gaza. "And that's why I'm trying to do everything that I can to try to stop it."
Capehart also questioned Biden in that exchange about his plans to visit Michigan as another stop at a critical swing state in advance of the 2024 presidential election. The anchor raised the issue of tens of thousands of voters who marked "uncommitted" as a sign of protest against the president.
About 100,000 Democrats voted "uncommitted" in the primary last month due to anger at Biden over his Middle East policies, with marked support in Detroit, Michigan, especially as a city with a heavy Arab-American population.
Far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., also supported the uncommitted vote in her state last month. On Election Day, the anti-Israel politician said she was "proud" to oppose Biden.
"I was proud today to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted. We must protect our democracy, we must make sure that our government is about us, about the people," Tlaib said. "When 74% of Democrats in Michigan support a cease-fire, yet President Biden is not hearing us, this is the way we can use our democracy to say listen."
"Listen to the families right now that have been directly impacted, but also listen to the majority of Americans that are saying enough. No more wars, no more using our dollars to fund a genocide," she said.
Biden won Michigan by about 155,000 votes in 2020, taking back the state after Trump narrowly won it in 2016. Trump's victory there was the first by a Republican since George H. W. Bush in 1988.
Fox News' Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
