During Thursday’s White House press briefing, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby was asked about the possibility of getting a ceasefire while President Biden’s still president.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thanks, Karine. John, the President has been pushing for a peace deal, a ceasefire, for
00:06weeks, if not months. Now that he has announced that he's not running for another term, how,
00:13if in any way, that complicates those efforts to reach a peace deal?
00:19We don't believe it does. And in the conversations that we've been having in just recent hours,
00:23there's no reason to suspect that his decision not to run for re-election is going to have
00:27an impact on our ability to get the deal done. What's going to have an impact, as I
00:31said before, is leadership. Leadership on all sides and the ability to continue to compromise.
00:37We are close. We just have to finish it.
00:39The President also, last night, spoke about his goals in his remaining six months in office.
00:46One of those goals is to get back those wrongfully detained Americans, people like Evan Gershkovich
00:53from the Wall Street Journal.
00:54And Paul Whelan.
00:56And Paul Whelan, exactly. The President has been described by some as a lamed-up President.
01:03Does it complicate those efforts to get back those wrongfully detained Americans?
01:07I can assure you that we continue to work extremely hard at getting all wrongfully detained
01:14Americans around the world, including those in Russia that we've been talking about, getting
01:17them home where they belong. They don't need to – there's no reason for them to be detained.
01:21The whole team is working on this around the clock. I can absolutely assure you of that.
01:25Let's start with Ben.
01:27Thank you. Thank you for the answer, also, on the last question. Yesterday, Netanyahu
01:34asked the U.S. to fast-track weapons in his speech. I'm wondering if the President is
01:39considering lifting his pause on the 2,000-pound bombs that the Israelis have blocked.
01:44There's no change to that policy at this time. And I would just add that that is the
01:50only shipment of the only type of weaponry that has been held up, that all the military
01:56security assistance that had been going to Israel continues to go to Israel. They are
02:00still getting the tools, the capabilities, and the weapons that they need for the fight
02:04that they're in.
02:05Thanks, John. Thanks, Graydon. What conversations has President Biden had with Vice President
02:11Kamala Harris ahead of her meeting with the Israeli prime minister?
02:14I won't speak to private conversations between the President and the Vice President. I wouldn't
02:18do that on any given day, and I'm certainly not going to do it starting today. The Vice
02:24President, I'm sure her team will give her a readout of how the conversation with – between
02:30the President and the prime minister is going right now, and that that will, I'm sure,
02:35inform her conversation. But I'm not going to get more detail than that.
02:38And just a second question. What additional pressure is the President willing to exert
02:42upon Netanyahu just given that the framework, as my colleague mentioned, was just submitted
02:48about a few weeks ago and is still – nothing has come of that?
02:51The framework for the deal?
02:52Mm-hmm.
02:53I mean, my goodness, there's – I know it's – I know we don't – we're not
02:56there yet, and I get that there's more work to be done, but think about what has happened
03:00since he laid that out on the 31st of May. We went from that framework proposal to getting
03:05the framework itself agreed to now by both sides. There's some haggling that's being
03:10done over some of the details. Some of that haggling has had positive result, and we have
03:17closed some gaps. There are still gaps that remain to be closed, as I said earlier, some
03:21details that need to be worked out. There's an awful lot of energy and effort being put
03:25into this, certainly by our team, but I go so far as to say by our counterparts as well.
03:30Okay, Jay.