Война [War]

17. President Biden landed in Israel on October 18, 2023, 11 days after the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people and one week after holding Netanyahu and his cabinet back from a preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Biden descended the steps of the plane, aviator sunglasses dangling from his left hand, and immediately threw his arms around Bibi in a hug. A few months later, in the spring of 2024, Biden would privately refer to Netanyahu as “a bad fucking guy” and a “liar.”

18. “How are you going to go after Hamas?” President Biden asked Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu in a conference room that doubled as an underground bunker in Tel Aviv. We want to eliminate them, Netanyahu said. All of them. Well, Biden said, you know, we had the same approach in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and it was difficult for us to erase an ideology. Sometimes you create fighters by the way you go after them.

19. Secretary of State Tony Blinken urged Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet to let humanitarian aid into Gaza. “Not a drop, not an ounce of anything will go into Gaza to help people,” Netanyahu said. “What about if we send experts in?” he suggested. “Prime Minister,” Blinken said in frustration, “you can’t eat or drink an expert. People need the food and water.” After an almost nine-hour negotiation, Netanyahu finally agreed to open the spigot of aid just a notch.

20. “Bibi, you’ve got no strategy. You’ve got no strategy,” President Biden said to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on April 4, 2024. “That’s not true, Joe,” Netanyahu said. “We are dismantling Hamas…. We have to clear Rafah and it’s over. It’ll take three weeks.” Biden knew this was not true. Netanyahu at times sounded aggrieved, as if the whole world had turned against Israel, the U.N., everybody. He challenged that the humanitarian situation was that bad in Gaza where Israel’s military operations had produced 39 million tons of debris. By mid-April 2024, more than 30,000 Palestinians had been killed and 80,000 homes destroyed. International aid agencies reported that half a million Palestinians were facing starvation.

21. A Palestinian family in their destroyed home after an Israeli air strike in Rafah, February 22, 2024.

22. Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk was in the Situation Room with President Biden and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan when Iran launched 110 ballistic missiles at Israel on April 13, 2024. On a big screen, they watched the missiles, yellow streaks, move across the screen like something out of an old ’80s movie or computer game. McGurk had managed intense crisis situations across four Republican and Democratic administrations—George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Biden. This was one of the most intense moments of his life.

23. Retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg was supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign “100 percent.” Kellogg still spoke to the former president on the phone regularly, offering advice on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and even secretly meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a trip to Israel in March 2024. “Biden, Netanyahu, do not see eye to eye about virtually anything,” Kellogg told Trump.

24. Colin Kahl, who served as Biden’s national security adviser during his vice presidency (2014–2017) and then as top policy adviser to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (2021–July 2023), could see that Biden’s strategy with Netanyahu back then was directly translating into his approach now. “Biden was a firm believer that we should basically do big hugs, little punches. That is hug the Israelis in public and then rough them up behind the scenes,” Kahl told others. “I do not believe that Biden trusts Netanyahu. I do not believe that he personally likes Netanyahu.”

25. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who oversees all U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA, reported in 2024 that Russia had been weakened by the war in Ukraine, but that only made Putin more dangerous. “Between the United States and Russia, we have over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons,” Haines reported. “You do not want a country that has got that kind of a stockpile of nuclear weapons to feel as if it’s slipping.”

26. “They tell me if I get convicted, it’ll be even better for me in the election,” Trump said on the phone to his former lawyer Tim Parlatore in the midst of his hush money trial in New York. “But Tim,” Trump said, “I don’t want to get convicted.” On May 30, 2024, Trump was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records, becoming the first former U.S. president to be a convicted felon.

27. “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” former president Trump said after President Biden’s time expired on a question about the southern border. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.” Biden closed his eyes during questions as if he were fighting his own internal battle to remember, to focus and complete his thought. It was sad, a shocking portrait of a struggle to revive his authority. Even before the debate was over, Democrats were in a full-blown panic about Biden’s fitness to compete for a second presidential term at age 81.

28. “Get down! Get down!” Secret Service agents yelled to Trump as a lone gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire from a nearby rooftop during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, July 13. Trump slapped a hand to his right ear and dropped to his hands and knees behind the podium, blood coating his ear and dripping down his cheek. Secret Service agents surrounded the former president and moved to hustle him offstage. “Wait, wait,” Trump insisted. He threw his fist into the air and mouthed, “Fight. Fight. Fight.” The crowd erupted with cheers. “USA, USA, USA,” they chanted.

29. On Sunday, July 21, 2024, President Biden announced in a letter that he would not seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee. Harris entered the race with a surge of energy, Democratic support and a degree of relief behind her. She was presented as the former prosecutor pitted against a convicted felon. During a rally in the battleground state Georgia, on July 30, Harris mocked Trump’s indecision on whether to debate her. “Well Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage,” she said. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.’ ”