Schumer suggests he’s on board with House GOP proposal to have Netanyahu address Congress

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer appears to take up House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal to host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at a joint session of Congress.

Johnson said yesterday that he was considering the idea, and went further in a CNBC interview this morning, saying “we’ll certainly extend that invitation” and “we’re just trying to work out schedules on all this.”

A spokesperson for Schumer says the Republican House speaker hasn’t discussed the matter with him. However, Schumer says in a statement, “I will always welcome the opportunity for the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way.”

Yesterday, Schumer’s office confirmed that he declined a request from Netanyahu to address the Democratic caucus in the Senate, explaining that such a meeting shouldn’t be held in a partisan format. The GOP’s Senate leadership, on the other hand, accepted the proposal and Netanyahu spoke to them yesterday during a closed luncheon.

An address to a joint session of Congress would require approval from the Senate majority leader in addition to an invitation from the House speaker. Johnson told CNBC that he would be fine with the possibility of Netanyahu just addressing the House if Schumer were to decline to cooperate.

“But I think a big majority that Senate would want to come and stand in support of Netanyahu and Israel,” Johnson said.

Dozens of Democrats boycotted Netanyahu’s last joint session address in 2015, after it was organized behind the back of then-president Barack Obama so that the Israeli premier could lobby Congress against the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the White House.

Netanyahu’s popularity among Democrats has since only further sunk, with Schumer — a longtime pro-Israel stalwart — giving a speech last week on the Senate floor calling for early elections to replace the longtime prime minister. The highest-ranking Jewish elected representative in US history argued that Netanyahu has lost his way in prioritizing his political survival over the good of the country and represented an obstacle to peace, along with Hamas, the Israeli far-right right and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Johnson again blasted Schumer’s “outrageous” speech. “To suggest to our strongest ally in the Middle East, the only stable democracy [there], that he knows better how to run their democracy is just patently absurd. Imagine if I came on your show this morning and called for regime change in Ukraine in the middle of their crisis fighting for their very survival. That’s what Israel is facing right now.”