On Thursday, President Joe Biden gave a rare address from the Oval Office. He discussed the Israel-Hamas war, and he earned praise from an unlikely source: Fox News Political Analyst Brit Hume.
Hume raised some eyebrows during the cable network’s roundtable discussion about the address — and received immediate, harsh criticism online.
“I think it may be remembered as one of the best, if not the best, speeches of his presidency,” Hume said on the air Thursday. “He was firm, he was unequivocal, he was strong, as he has been particularly in recent days before he went to Israel and while he was over there.”
In particular, Hume praised Biden’s comments on U.S.-Iran relations and on aid to Ukraine.
Hume made only one critique. He mentioned Biden’s inability to acknowledge his past blunders, like the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“I think that he was hampered a little bit in that effort by the fact that he dare not really mention the best reason… for sticking with it in Ukraine, which is, ‘What would the rest of the world and its evildoers think if we pulled out of there?’ because that comes on the heels of his having pulled out of Afghanistan, which arguably emboldened all of our adversaries around the world, particularly Vladimir Putin,” Hume said.
Hume faced harsh blowback on social media.
Newsmax host Eric Bolling tweeted, “Dear @brithume I must have been watching a different address.. I saw a pandering, self-aggrandizing, bumbling failure of a POTUS. You saw something completely different… Where was the stern warning to would be terrorists? Where was the American resolve to destroy thoughts and plans for future terror on Americans and our allies?”
Fox News colleague Sean Hannity even joked on air, “I don’t want this to be gang-up-on-Brit night.”
Hume defended his praise for Biden.
“I think he was wise to focus as much of the speech as he did on Ukraine,” Hume said after some pushback from the rest of the roundtable.
“I think he was he was trying very much to weigh the two together, and that’s why he went back and forth between [the Russo-Ukrainian War and the Israel-Hamas War]. I don’t think that was a fault in the speech.”
In response, Fox commentator Martha MacCallum told Hume that Biden had only pointed out the obvious. “It seems that the task has been laid out. The question is whether or not this president can handle the enormity of the threat to civilization… and whether or not he is up to it, frankly,” MacCallum said.
Watch Hume’s remarks here —
Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume on President Biden's speech:
"It may be remembered as one of the best, if not the best, speeches of his presidency." pic.twitter.com/yWj6KWpdXx
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 20, 2023
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