AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Now the administration has removed the picture and made a public apology for the security lapse. The damage is already done, however, as Hamas terrorists presumably are able to screen capture just like anyone else. Plenty of people have already taken advantage of the screenshot button, and the untouched photo is still all over the place on the social media platform X.
The White House statement was short:
As soon as this was brought to our attention, we immediately deleted the photo. We regret the error and any issues this may have caused.
The photo, taken at an event where Biden met with Israeli medics who had responded during the Hamas October 7 terror attacks, was an obvious security failure and violated standard practices:
It appeared to violate Department of Defense rules by revealing the men's faces, which are usually blurred in any officially released photographs.
Everyday Pentagon practice is to hide the elite units' identities, whether in training or on deployment.
The men, unshaven with beards, wore camouflage and had American flags on their arms as they shook hands with Biden.
The gaffe did not go unnoticed. "Gross incompetence," wrote Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN). Former Fox News host and podcaster Monica Crowley was even more pointed:
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TWEET
Monica Crowley @MonicaCrowley
The Biden WH just doxxed the Delta Force operators in Israel to rescue American hostages
and the Biden State Dept issued a Worldwide Caution for U.S. citizens.
Your life - and the life of every American - is in exponentially more danger under this corrupt psychopath.
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The incredible security blunder comes as the president prepares to speak to the nation Thursday at 8 PM EST about the nascent war:
The address, which is expected to begin at 8 p.m., comes a day after President Biden visited with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli officials in Tel Aviv. Biden and Israeli officials discussed the ongoing war, and the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip.
Biden has pledged to support Israel, but is expected to announce $100 million humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank.
"I was very blunt about the need to support getting humanitarian aid to Gaza – get it to Gaza and do it quickly," Biden told reporters Wednesday on his trip back to Washington, D.C.
Biden said he "got no pushback, virtually none" from Netanyahu.
It's very concerning that during a time of war when the United States needs to be projecting strength, we have an administration that makes such amateurish screwups like this.
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RELATED ARTICLE
By Nick Arama | RedState.com
As my colleague Bob Hoge reported, Joe Biden's speech on Israel and Ukraine on Thursday night was a complete mess. He was requesting aid for Israel, Ukraine, and the Palestinians in Gaza.
He started not being aware that the was live on the air, so there was this awkward pause.
But that's typical Joe; he always seems to have some difficulty.
I'm not sure what he thought he would achieve with the speech. I think he was trying to use the support for Israel to bootstrap a comparison to Ukraine, to try to justify why we should support both, but they're not the same. And in the case of Hamas, they killed and kidnapped Americans. But that, which should be the focus of his efforts, seemed to get short shrift in Biden's remarks. He made brief mention of them but spent far more time talking about how we had to help the Palestinians, saying he was "heartbroken" by the loss of Palestinian lives rather than those of Americans or Israelis. He claimed that Hamas doesn’t represent the people when indeed, that’s exactly what they do since they are the “elected” government. He also spoke about Islamophobia and the murder of a child in the U.S. and commented, "You are all America," like listeners would think they were more worthy as people if he told them they were. It was a strange remark.
He may have meant to say, "You're all Americans," but he couldn't read the teleprompter again.
Also, he may point out antisemitism in the U.S., but he fails to call out members of his own party such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for that exact thing.
Even as he spoke about the aid that might go to Gaza, he couldn’t guarantee that Hamas wouldn’t grab it.
I'm confused. Who was attacked here? Wasn't it Israel and innocent Americans? Why was the focus on the Palestinians and Islamophobia?
He had another fight with the teleprompter when he spoke about Ukraine and Russia.
But if he was trying to make the case for continuously pouring American money into Ukraine by using Israel, that didn't work.
Indeed he tried to say he had been to both war zones in Israel and Ukraine. He pumped himself up, claiming he'd been there when the "sirens" were going off. As we've previously reported, there weren't any attacks, and the cameras were rolling for that obvious photo op. He has no shame at all to bring that up now when that's already been exposed.
But the thing he missed in trying to pump himself up was that he reminded everyone that we wouldn't have these war zones where he could get his photo ops without his bad foreign policy.
I think he not only was trying to make the case for more money, but he was also trying to reinvigorate his polls which are truly in the dumpster, by trying to sound like a leader. And if that was what he was trying to do, he failed big time.
