Biden said to claim ’18 out of 19 people who work for Netanyahu are liars’

Adding to his book’s claims of tension between the US president and Israeli PM, Bob Woodward tells the Washington Post that Biden has ‘total distrust’ in Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden meet at the White House, July 25, 2024 (Jacob Magid/Times of Israel)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden meet at the White House, July 25, 2024 (Jacob Magid/Times of Israel)

Journalist and author Bob Woodward, whose new book, “War,” has already made headlines, claimed that US President Joe Biden told aides that “18 of the 19 people” who work for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are “liars.”

Snippets from Woodward’s book, as reported by CNN, claimed that in private Biden referred to Netanyahu as a “fucking liar” and called him a “son of a bitch” and “a bad fucking guy,” but Woodward’s recent claims go further in depicting the breakdown of trust between Netanyahu and Biden over the past year.

Asked about such comments in a conversation with the Washington Post on Tuesday, Woodward said that Biden told his “close aides” that “’18 of the 19 people who work for Netanyahu are liars.’ Total distrust.”

“But here’s the strategic, geostrategic reality,” Woodward added. “We are allies of Israel, and Biden sticks to that. But Biden’s policy really is pro-Israel.”

The book, which gives an inside look into the Biden administration’s foreign policy during the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars, says that the Biden-Netanyahu relationship grew increasingly tense during the spring of 2024.

According to the excerpts, during an April phone call, Biden asked Netanyahu: “What’s your strategy, man?”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) meets with US President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Netanyahu said Israel had to go into Rafah, the Gaza-Egypt border city that the IDF said had become Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza.

“Bibi, you’ve got no strategy,” responded Biden, according to Woodward, who also wrote that the US president said Netanyahu “doesn’t give a damn” about Hamas and “only about himself.”

After Israel entered Rafah, Biden said of Netanyahu: “He’s a fucking liar.”

“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy,” said Biden privately, according to Woodward. “He’s a bad fucking guy!”

Woodward is most famous for being part of the Washington Post investigative team that exposed the “Watergate” scandal in 1972 that eventually led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon.

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