According to Mediaite, in the midst of a heated social media feud, Senior Communications Adviser Andrew Bates fired back by highlighting reports that former President Donald Trump had allegedly disclosed Israeli intelligence secrets during his presidency. This contentious exchange took place against the backdrop of questions surrounding how Hamas managed to bypass Israel’s defenses and carry out a devastating terrorist assault.
As violence continued to escalate in Israel, critics of President Joe Biden seized on the White House’s announcement of a press “lid” at 11:46 a.m., signaling that there were no public events scheduled for the remainder of the day. This led to criticism from some quarters.
Bates responded to a tweet from Fox News anchor John Roberts, defending the President and explaining that a “lid” is simply a courtesy announcement to reporters, indicating that they should not expect public events. He clarified that such an announcement does not mean the President has ceased working and stressed that President Biden was actively engaged in supporting Israel throughout the day. Bates also provided a summary of President Biden’s activities.
For those unfamiliar, a “lid” is just a courtesy announcement to reporters that they should not expect public events.
A lid does *not* mean the President has stopped working, as is implied in the *Fox* tweet below.
On the contrary, he’s working to support Israel all day
When former Trump White House senior adviser Stephen Miller objected to Bates’ response, Bates accused Miller of projecting and raised a pointed question about whether the Trump administration had used a euphemism like “executive time” for disclosing Israeli intelligence.
The link in Bates’ tweet referred to a controversial May 2017 Oval Office meeting between President Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Multiple news outlets reported that during this meeting, Trump had shared classified information believed to have originated from Israeli intelligence. At the time, The New York Times even raised concerns about the possibility of this information being passed on to Iran.
Although Bates remained cautious about directly implicating this story in the current crisis in Israel, the narrative that Trump might bear responsibility for an intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to catch Israel off guard began to gain traction among some prominent social media liberals. The suggestion that Iran could have obtained information from Trump, whether from that meeting or some other undisclosed circumstance, and subsequently shared it with Hamas, quickly gained momentum on social media as the attacks in Israel unfolded. Ex-presidential niece Mary Trump and others went further, sharing more direct accusations, citing the Oval Office meeting and other circumstantial factors to link Trump to the recent attacks.
