WaPo Columnist Hails Trump for Achieving in Gaza Deal What Biden ‘Could Never Do’
David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post, praised President Donald Trump for doing what previous President Joe Biden “could never do” in his Gaza peace deal.
On Wednesday night, Trump said that Israel and Hamas had negotiated the first step of what he called a “historic” peace deal: a truce and the first exchange of hostages and prisoners.
The president said on Truth Social that “ALL of the hostages will be released very soon” as part of the arrangement. He called the action “unprecedented.”
Ignatius’s comments on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday came after host Joe Scarborough said that during peace discussions, both Israeli and Arab officials agreed that “if anyone was going to be able to resolve” the situation, “it would be Donald Trump.”
Ignatius replied, “So, Joe, on the two sides of that, I can remember in the month or so after October 7, an Israeli senior official saying to me, we are so disoriented and traumatized by this war. The United States is going to have to make decisions for us. Joe Biden could never do that. And Donald Trump was able to do it.”
He continued: “And [he] did it at the decisive moment when he said, essentially, this war must end and Israel cannot annex the West Bank, which many right-wing Israelis wanted.”
Ignatius then praised Trump for showing regional leaders in the Middle East that he was “serious” about peace while “quietly” sending his team and “unlikely emissary” Steve Witkoff to work “behind the scenes week by week” toward a final 20-point peace plan.
“That is something that Joe Biden, for all his desire for peace, wasn’t able to do,” he concluded.
Earlier in the show, Ignatius had said: “This war was blocked for two years. President Biden, who preceded him, was unable to find a way to stop it. President Trump found that way by being tough on both sides. And he will take a victory lap for sure over the next few days, but it’s deserved. There’s no way that I can see that this would have been done without Trump’s pressure in the final hours.”
WATCH:
New York Times columnist Elisabeth Bumiller jumped in and noted that she was in Israel last year and that people told her that “only Donald Trump” would be able to achieve the peace deal.
“Well, I just would like to first say that, you know, I was in Israel last summer and to a person, Israelis said to me that the only person who can resolve this war is Donald Trump. And these are not all Israelis who are big fans of Donald Trump. But they just felt that he alone in the world had the kind of leverage and the kind of pressure he could put on president — on Netanyahu to get this done,” Bumiller said.
“And as we can see, he — you know, Netanyahu was backed into a corner, not just by — by the Europeans, by — by Americans, but, you know, worldwide he was increasingly isolated. And Israelis were deeply, deeply unhappy with Netanyahu. And so it’s — it’s very interesting to see the — the celebrations in Tel Aviv. I — you know, those were — the country last summer was really — it’s largely in despair about what was going on with the war and with — with the government,” Bumiller added.
“So, again, I will have to see how this plays out. This is — you have to give Donald Trump this victory for now. And again, as we’ve all been talking about, the trouble is — is ahead. You know, will Hamas disarm? How far will Israel — how far will the IDF pull back in Gaza and who will govern Gaza going to the future? Those are big, big questions. But you have to say this is a — this is a — this is a very, very positive, happy day at this moment,” she added.
