Israel and Hamas entered a four-day ceasefire over the weekend to allow for hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Some three dozen Israeli hostages were released in exchange for more than 100 Palestinian prisoners.
The deal, announced last Wednesday, was brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States – and President Joe Biden has not been shy about taking credit.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Dying Citizen, to discuss the freeing of the hostages and Biden’s politicization of the process.
Biden Plays Politics
Speaking from Nantucket on Sunday, President Biden confirmed 4-year-old Israeli-American hostage Abigail Edan was among those released in Gaza and advocated for a longer pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas. “It is unbelievable,” Megyn said. “When I listened to President Biden over the past few days, all I hear is I, I, I, me me me: ‘I did it,’ ‘my team has been working,’ ‘I did this,’ ‘I’ve been negotiating.'” She played a few snippets of his press conference to prove her point:
Biden: Under a deal reached by extensive use diplomacy, including numerous calls I’ve made from the Oval Office… Today has been the product of a lot of hard work and weeks of personal engagements… I, along with my team, have worked around the clock to secure their release… I’ve consistently pressed for a pause in the fighting for two reasons: to accelerate and expand humanitarian assistance going into Gaza and to facilitate the release of hostages.
– November 26, 2023
It was an unusual tone, in Megyn’s view, for the president of the United States. “What commander in chief, upon the release of some hostages – just one American – gets out there and uses I, I, I, me, me, me over and over and over,” she asked. “No U.S. president does that. They talk about ‘we and our allies.’ He’s making it political.”
Words Matter
What’s more, according to Hanson, is the “almost neutral terms” Biden used when speaking about the terrorist organization. “[He] expresses empathy with the hostages but never does he ever elaborate that there’s one side who’s taking captives and the other side isn’t; there’s one side that has to hand over three convicted terrorists for every hostage they get back… This is a complete violation of war,” he explained. “Everybody has lost sight of what Hamas is doing and who they are.”
But Biden’s approach is not unlike his counterparts overseas. “He talks about Hamas in neutral terms and so does the UN, so does Europe – I mean, the Irish president said that one of the Irish hostages was ‘lost’ and then ‘found,'” he shared. “So, nobody ever really says: This is horrific; this is not a nation state… it’s a bunch of terrorists that take little kids hostage and murder their parents.”
The ‘Horror’ the Hostages Faced
While the media has been full of, in Megyn’s words, “celebratory headlines” in the wake of the hostage release, she said all she has felt is “horror” as more details emerge about what life was like in captivity. “My notes on my packet my team put together for me are ‘hostages so old’ and then the next page reads ‘and so young,'” Megyn shared. “A two year old is a baby – so is a three year old – and the elderly victims… there’s an 85 year old and an 84 year old.”
She thought of her own 82-year-old mother. “My mom uses a walker. She has real difficulty getting around. She has medications she needs to take,” Megyn noted. “I think about these women in their mid-eighties or late-seventies, to put them through this kind of horror… Of course we’re glad that they’ve been released, but it’s like the media is ready to move on from the horror that these women were put through.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hanson by tuning in to episode 675 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.