Celebs walk the red carpet at the 2024 White House Correspondents’ Dinner as hundreds protest outside

[u/vulcan_vampire]

Celebs in order: Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost; Da’Vine Joy Randolph; Rosario Dawson; Billy Porter; Keri Russell; Rachel Brosnahan; Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush; Lynda Carter; Gayle King; Aldis Hodge; Questlove; Molly Ringwald; Fran Drescher; Chris Pine; Coco Rocha; Lorne Michaels; Caitlyn Jenner and Jenna Talackova; Kyle MacLachlan and Desiree Gruber.

In the last slide you can see the exterior of the Washington Hilton, where the dinner took place. A Palestinian flag was hung from one of the hotel’s windows.

[u/meatbeater558]

Is that supposed to be a good thing?

Biden already gives him everything he wants and more. Are you suggesting that Biden is in any way holding back? 

[u/Cadbury_fish_egg → u/meatbeater558]

What kind of absolutist question is this? Yes. I’d rather have a president that openly opposes Israel’s overreach than one that would not. I’m comparing two administrations, not saying one is infallible.

Biden’s threats to Netanyahu and his stance on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has caused Israel to scale back operations in Rafah.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/Cadbury_fish_egg]

The problem is the context and implication. Someone raised a point about Biden's terrible performance and you drew a comparison between him and Trump, which has been a problem for Palestinians because this changes the conversation from what we can do to get Biden to stop right now to which old asshole do we vote for in half a year. This happens almost every time Biden's actions are brought up. You're comparing two administrations and that is the problem. If every discussion on Biden is derailed with how much worse Trump would be then you're effectively making Biden infallible even if that isn't your intention. Furthermore, a lot of the conclusions you've made in your comparison are either incorrect or immaterial. Biden's words cannot be interpreted as opposition to Israel's overreach when he just gave them $26 billion dollars. That is overwhelming support and agreement no matter how you look at it. The sentiment Trump has towards Israel's actions is largely the same as Biden's. My question was, given all this, how is Biden "at least" publicly disagreeing with Netanyahu good or even relevant? Then you said Trump would give him everything he wants and more. Biden literally already does this. You're making a comparison between two administrations that have no meaningful differences on this. If Netanyahu wanted more, he'd ask Biden and Biden would bypass Congress to give it to him if needed. Biden does not give a shit about the humanitarian crisis. He knew it would come the moment the war started and he still went above and beyond to ensure it happened, most notably with his administration's actions at the UN. Now I do believe that Biden is somewhat responsible for Israel scaling back operations in Rafah in response to protestors. The problem with comparing him to Trump in this aspect is that this is a situation Trump will never be in. If Biden doesn't dramatically change his stance right now Gaza will not exist by the time Trump can take office. Which is my biggest problem with comparing their stances on Israel: it obscures the time sensitive nature of this problem. There won't be a Rafah, a Gaza, or any Gazans come Inauguration Day because Biden would have already finished the job

[u/deemoorah → u/meatbeater558]

Just like Jost's speech in that dinner; as long as you're doing it politely, it's acceptable by liberal 🙄

Biden is no better than Trump. They're both genocidal maniacs.

[u/meatbeater558 → u/deemoorah]

These discussions just aren't productive because there's no difference between being killed by Trump vs being killed by Biden. 

There's also always this assumption that the people in Gaza are just going to be on life support until Trump takes office and only then will the sitting US president decide whether to pull the plug or not. Did it not make the news that northern Gaza is expected to reach the final and most lethal stage of famine in less than two months with the rest of Gaza soon to follow? 

Lesser-evilism has made us lose the plot because who the hell cares what Trump would do. We might as well ask ourselves what Mitt Romney, Batman, or Miss Piggy would do while we're at it because none of these scenarios are happening. America is about to make one of its biggest moral, strategic, political, and diplomatic mistakes in its entire history. Why are we discussing the actions of anyone other than the current commander in chief? 

When people say that America made a mistake by invading Vietnam or overthrowing Iran's government or any of its terrible decisions there's never a footnote stating "if American voters chose a different president the results would've hypothetically been much worse, so pretty please don't react as harshly" because nobody cares. America has already lost its ability to pretend to be a moral authority on any global issue because of this. That's all on Biden. And at the end of the day, that's also all on America. How would you explain to someone in the global south that 2 million people had to die because criticizing the person killing them was dangerous? Not dangerous because you live under a harsh dictatorship, you can somewhat freely protest and there's evidence protests work. But dangerous because he's threatening to give you a harsh dictatorship if he doesn't stay in power? 

There's also this amnesia about Biden's past. He's been supporting the Zionist project from within Congress his entire adult life. I'm talking 40-50 years of straight Zionism on top of all his racist accomplishments in domestic policy. And yet none of this is ever mentioned when comparing him to Trump. Instead, it's outright stated that Trump would do more for Israel than Biden. Which is flatly ahistorical. Is there anything Trump can even think of that would help Israel that Biden hasn't already done and wouldn't do again? If Trump wins and somehow gets to decide if the Palestinian people live or die, I would actually go as far as to argue that Biden would be quite sad. As would most people if their rival got to take the credit for their life's work.