So you started out on the Biden campaign as an idealist?
Yeah.
What was the final straw in saying I can't stay here anymore?
Tariq Habash, a political appointee within the Department of Education,
has announced his resignation.
He announced on Wednesday that he will be stepping down from his position in
the Education Department due to President Joe Biden's handling of the war in Gaza.
He is, in fact, Palestinian American.
Obviously, he is having moral issues with serving in an administration
that seems to be completely fine with the ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
And so he has made his decision, and we're going to get to more
of what he has to say in this interview with Joy-Ann Reid later in the segment.
But for now, I think it's important to also focus on the fallout
in Biden's campaign because 17 of his
current campaign staffers have penned an open letter urging him to change course.
So let's get to those details.
In a letter, 17 current Biden campaign staffers called directly on the president
to push for a permanent cease fire in the months long conflict.
It is a war in the Gaza Strip, where the intentions of the Israeli
government has been made very clear they are ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
The staffers also urged the president to end unconditional military aid to Israel
and advocated for a de-escalation in the region, including the release of hostages.
I would venture to say that is a reasonable position to have.
It is not one sided.
It's on one hand very understanding of Israel's need to defend itself
while also calling on a cease fire.
Considering the insane numbers of Palestinian civilians that have already
perished, already died as a result of Israel's aerial bombardment of that
region, the numbers are likely higher.
But currently the official numbers that are being reported are 23,000.
And I say the numbers are likely higher because of the fact
that reporting of civilian deaths has slowed down as this war has gone on.
But also that number that I just gave you, the 23,000 does not include
the Palestinians who are trapped under the rubble, who have been trapped under
the rubble, and Palestinians are unable to save their loved ones
because they don't have the fuel necessary to operate the heavy machinery that can
help to dig them out of that rubble.
Now, I want to give you a few excerpts from this letter
written by the campaign staffers, which, of course, was an anonymous letter.
We know that 17 people are behind it, but they fear retaliation.
So they didn't pen their names in this letter, but nonetheless,
they write the following.
As your staff, we believe it is both a moral and electoral imperative for you to
publicly call for a cessation of violence, the staffers wrote in the letter,
which was anonymously signed and posted on medium complicity
in the death over 20,000 Palestinians of over 20,000 Palestinians, 8200 of whom
are children, simply cannot be justified.
Biden for president staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who
have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever.
Because of this conflict, it is not enough to merely be
the alternative to Donald Trump.
The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters stomachs,
the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection.
Now, Biden's handling of the war in Gaza has not sat well with the American people.
Poll after poll indicates that the majority of voters upwards of 60%.
And I'll give you the exact polls in just a moment.
Want a ceasefire? And so think about how demoralizing it is
to work as a Biden campaign staffer.
You're already at a huge disadvantage. You're already working to try to get Biden
an incredibly unpopular.
And let's keep it real up there in age.
You know, he's 81 years old and that has been working against him.
You're working hard to try to get him elected.
And then on top of that, you have the added layer of public opinion
in America, where the majority of voters want a cease fire in Gaza and Biden
continues to send weaponry to Israel, refuses to call for a cease fire.
Remember, Biden also bypassed Congress in order to send hundreds of millions
of dollars in weapons to Israel.
So American voters see that.
And if you're a campaign staffer, you're you feel like you're, you know,
standing underneath a waterfall with a tiny bucket, trying to, you know,
drive this situation in a better direction and it's just not happening.
And so even though they are saying this openly, and of course, I'm sure the Biden
campaign isn't happy about the fact that.
This open letter has been penned by staffers.
I do think that this comes from a place of actually giving a damn
about getting Biden reelected.
It comes from a good place, but I somehow think that the Biden
administration and the Biden campaign overall is not really going to listen
to the advice that's given here.
But nonetheless, they say that they fear that the president's stance
could affect his standing with voters.
And to be clear, that has already happened with young voters,
black and Hispanic voters, and also with Arab American voters.
And keep in mind, in swing states like Michigan, where you have a sizable
population of Arab American voters, you're going to need them to be on your
side if you're going to win that state.
Biden's handling of this conflict is clearly frustrated many voters
that he needs to win his reelection.
According to a CBS news YouGov poll from December, 61% of Americans
disapprove of his approach.
And that doesn't even include the information that we learned from
the New York Times Siena College poll, which finds that nearly three quarters of
18 to 29 year olds disapprove of the way Biden is handling the conflict in Gaza.
And among registered voters, they say they would vote for Trump
by 49% to 43% in July.
Those young voters backed Biden by ten percentage points.
So things are looking pretty grim for Biden.
And again, it must be incredibly demoralizing to be a Biden campaign
staffer and try to turn this ship around.
Now, there's been division within the Biden campaign
and the administration for that matter.
This isn't the first time that we're sharing a story
involving people closely tied to Biden, basically calling him out and begging him
to handle this war differently.
For instance, in November, 500 political appointees and staff members
from 40 government agencies also anonymously signed a letter
calling for him to change course.
Another letter included the names of over 500 alumni
of Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
Then you have white House interns also writing an open letter urging
President Biden to again rethink the way he is handling this war and the way he is
supporting Israel's right wing government, especially now after he has been,
well, not him, but Israel's been pretty vocal and open about the fact
that they're trying to permanently displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
They're in talks with various countries to see if those countries are
willing to absorb Palestinians, including the Democratic Republic of Congo.
That's ethnic cleansing. And so that is an issue.
And one other thing I want to just quickly note, there are Israel supporters who are
now questioning the veracity of this
latest letter from the campaign staffers.
Since they put this letter out anonymously,
there are no exact names attached to it, and I understand why they would do that.
Think about how easily you get called an anti-Semite in this country.
Not everyone works at tight.
Okay, other places will fire you if you criticize Israel critically.
If you're critical enough and you're vocal enough in your criticism and people
start calling you anti-Semite as a result, that's going to work against you
in the workplace and in the job market.
And so I understand that fear.
But Biden's supporters and those who think that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in
the Gaza Strip is totally fine and above board, they're questioning whether this
this is hilarious, whether this letter was even written by campaign staffers.
So Politico reported this, and Politico literally spoke to three of the campaign
staffers to verify the veracity of the letter and who's behind it.
But it doesn't matter.
The evidence doesn't matter because anyone who has a conscience
and anyone who dares speak out against what Israel is doing should be condemned,
should be discredited, should be ignored.
It's so incredibly ridiculous and laughable.
Now, how is the Biden campaign responding to this?
Well, let's let's get to that, because apparently one of the Biden campaign
members spoke to Politico anonymously.
This is a campaign official who spoke to Politico anonymously.
Are we going to question the veracity of this person?
Does this person even exist in Politico? Just make it up?
I don't know, I mean, that's how stupid the argument is.
But nonetheless, here's what the campaign staffer said.
When it comes to President Biden's position, he has been unequivocal.
Israel has the right and obligation to defend its people
after the October 7th terrorist attack.
I agree with that.
They do have the right to defend themselves
because it's not black and white.
It's not either Israel gets to do whatever
it wants and defend itself, or it just sits back and does absolutely nothing.
No, it's not it's not a binary here. It's not either or.
Israel gets to defend itself. Israel can take out Hamas.
I think that taking out Hamas in the first of all, I don't think that they're focused
on taking out Hamas right now.
I think they're hyper focused on punishing all Palestinians
living in the Gaza Strip.
But in doing that, they are reproducing Hamas militants.
We all know that.
So their strategy is not only cruel breaks international laws,
you know, breaks international laws pertaining to the Geneva Convention.
It's also counterproductive and allows
for more extremism to fester and grow.
So the idea that people who are critical of Israel's tactics do not believe that
Israel has the right to defend itself. That is a lie.
Israel doesn't get to do whatever it wants.
You don't get to ethnically cleanse people.
You don't get to break international laws. You don't get to do all this level.
An entire region, every single residential building, every single hospital.
You don't get to do that.
That's that's not the same as defending yourself.
And if someone is critical of that, it doesn't mean that they do not believe
that Israel should defend itself.
All right.
Let me continue with this ridiculous statement.
He, meaning Biden, also knows the importance of earning
the trust of every community, does he?
Which is why he is working closely and proudly with leaders in the Jewish, Muslim
and Palestinian communities in America.
Democrats are super embarrassing.
Yeah, that was an embarrassing statement. What does that even mean?
What does that even mean?
Oh, he's working with Jewish people and Palestinian people here in America.
Is he going to call for a ceasefire? And is he going to continue to send
2,000 pound bunker buster bombs to Israel with absolutely no strings attached,
unconditional support?
Is he going to keep doing that?
Because if he's going to keep doing that, I got to be honest with you all, I don't
give a damn who he's having conversations with here in the United States, okay?
I don't care about the surface level, shallow diversity of the Democratic Party.
What I care about is, you know, action. I care about results.
I want to see policies there that are indicative of giving a damn
about the humanity of all people, including Palestinians currently
being wiped out in the Gaza Strip.
Now let's get back to Tariq kabobs.
That was the Education Department official who has since stepped down following the
letter released by the campaign staffers.
Tariq Habash, who is a political appointee in the Department of Education, announced
his resignation due to the president's stance on the Israel-hamas War.
Now he is Palestinian-American.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm sure that weighed in on why he decided to step down.
And here he is speaking to Joy-Ann Reid on MSNBC to explain his
reasons for why he's doing this.
Unfortunately, all of that great work has been completely overshadowed because
of the president's complete unwillingness to demand an immediate and permanent cease
fire, and it is creating immense danger for millions of Palestinians in Gaza,
but also for Americans here at home.
Yeah.
You cited in your letter some of the sort of restatements of false information
that have dehumanized Palestinians.
That would include President Biden, who did repeat early on,
you know, some things that turned out not to check out that accused Palestinians of
and accused Hamas of.
But also just saying he didn't believe the numbers of Palestinian dead,
which the UN believes.
How did that feel?
Just as a Palestinian American, to hear the president say, I don't believe it.
I mean, it's heartbreaking. It hurts.
It is a dehumanizing thing to hear from the president of the United States,
someone who you worked so hard to campaign for and elect.
And I definitely don't blame him for feeling the way that he does.
The campaign staffers who put out this letter.
They've made their point of view known, and I think they should step down.
Much like Tariq Habash decided to step down.
Much like former State Department official veteran of the State Department, Josh Paul
decided to step down over the transfer of weapons to Israel with no conditions.
Make a real stance.
If he's not going to listen, then why are you going to work on a campaign
that urges people to vote for him?
And if there's any question about what the intentions of the Israeli government
happen to be, I do think it's important for you to listen to their officials,
listen to what they say out loud.
Certainly in the international press, they tend to tell Americans
what they want to hear because we want to feel good about ourselves.
We don't want to feel as though we're supporting ethnic cleansing.
So they'll tell us what we want to hear.
But you listen to the UK press, you listen to, let's say, Israeli ambassador to
the UK and what she says when she's on the press in the UK. What what does she say?
What are the intentions of the Israeli government as it pertains to Gaza?
Let's watch.
And one of the things we expose to the world after getting into,
the areas in Gaza that we try to find, all those tunnels and underground metro city
that Hamas has built thanks to this great support of Iran, Qatar, the international
community, generosity, everything turned to be this horrible terror city.
One of the things we realized that every school, every mosque, every
second house has an access to tunnel.
So this is and of course, ammunition. That's an argument.
For destroying the whole of Gaza, every single building in.
It. So do you have another solution?
How to destroy the underground tunnel city, that this is the place
where the terrorists hide, where they have all their ammunition.
She just said it out loud. That woman is vile.
You should watch her interviews. She.
She says a lot of things out loud that are incredibly vile, incredibly cruel.
So, you know, we got to throw, drop 2,000 pound bunker buster bombs
on every building in Gaza.
We got to level Gaza because of the tunnels, which, by the way,
have they destroyed the tunnels?
Do those bombs destroy the tunnels? Has there been any evidence of that?
They want to level Gaza, make it
unlivable for Palestinians so they have
no choice but to leave the Gaza Strip?
Whatever remains of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,
however many of them remain.
They want to force them out.
And then you have other members of the Israeli government
openly salivating over building Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip.
I mean, Bezalel Smotrich made that very clear on multiple occasions.
It's just so incredibly sick.
So I commend those who have the courage to speak out.
I totally understand why people would put this letter out there
without sharing their exact names.
But once the Biden campaign decides, no, no, we're going to keep sending
them the bombs so they can carry out the ethnic cleansing.
We're not going to listen to you. We don't care what you have to say.
Then you got to make a tough decision.
I have no interest in voting for Biden over this.
I don't care, no one's going to shame me.
No one's going to fear monger to me about Donald Trump.
I don't care. I don't support Biden.
I can't I can't look at what he is capable of supporting
and see him as a good person.
Period.
So the question is for the people who are being ignored, the people who are close
to Biden right now, what do you do next?
Do you keep working for him?
Do you keep trying to get him elected, or do you step down?
We'll see.
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