The only silver lining in having the Muslim Brotherhood run Egypt is the grim amusement we’ll get from watching American diplomats forced to continuously polish this guy’s rhetorical turds. This latest one was dropped at the same meeting where McCain et al. supposedly gave him a talking-to about his anti-semitic comments in 2010 before they flounced out in front of the microphones and promised to keep the foreign aid flowing to Cairo. And they were true to their word. Just this morning, four F-16s left the U.S. destined for Egypt as part of our aid package. Twelve more will follow. Mission accomplished, Maverick.
David Frum wonders whether there aren’t any spin doctors in Egypt who could have warned him away from this sort of language in front of U.S. politicians. No doubt. After decades of meetings, Egyptians must be used to cleaning up their anti-semitism when in front of their American sugar daddies. I think Morsi said it just to prove that he could get away with it. The White House isn’t going to do anything that might reduce its leverage over the Brotherhood vis-a-vis Israel; if that means having to smile tight-lipped when he starts rambling about what a great read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is, hey.
On the upside, Morsi will get along famously with our next defense secretary. Zing.
Morsy told the senators that the values of Islam teach respect for Christianity and Judaism, and he asserted repeatedly that he had no negative views about Judaism or the Jewish people, but then followed with a diatribe about Israel and Zionist actions against Palestinians, especially in Gaza.
Then Morsy crossed a line and made a comment that made the senators physically recoil in their chairs in shock, Coons said.
“He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably,'” Coons said…
“The meeting then took a very sharply negative turn for some time. It really threatened to cause the entire meeting to come apart so that we could not continue,” Coons said.
Morsi didn’t say specifically who those “certain forces” are but Coons, to his credit, doesn’t whitewash it. He told The Cable that it was perfectly clear in context. In fact, let me double down on the credit: It’s amazing to me that a Democratic senator in his first term would put the White House on the spot by revealing the latest anti-semitic excrescence from the guy who’s supposed to be keeping the peace in the Middle East. Why did that fall to him and not John “Straight-Talk Express” McCain? Did the sensitivities of confidential diplomacy trump the American public’s need to know (or rather be reminded) that the new president of Egypt is a Jew-hating crank?
Exit question: Does this revelation mark the end of Morsi’s interviews with American media? He played patty-cake with Time magazine and CNN, but eventually enough of this invective will pile up that U.S. reporters will have to start asking him about it notwithstanding their quasi-professional duty to suppress the information. His handlers will figure out that having him expound on camera about how Mossad was really behind 9/11 or whatever might push Obama into a corner politically where he has no choice but to yank those billions in aid. I think we’ve seen the last of him on TV or in print in the U.S.
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