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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. It's been four days since President Biden's feisty State of the Union address. Between that and the Super Tuesday election results last week for him and Donald Trump, it is now almost fully general election season already, and it's only March 11th. Trump has his legal issues to contend with, and Biden has ongoing and perhaps growing dissatisfaction with his role in the war in Gaza.

On Weekend Edition yesterday, for the first day of Ramadan, they played this clip of a Palestinian American from San Francisco named Marwan Sebeta, who is beginning the daily fasting ritual, but thinking about his relatives back in Central Gaza,

Marwan Sebeta: They will not have a meal. It shatter me. When I eat when it's time to break my fast, I'll be taking bites with a great deal of pain, sorrow, suffering, agony, and consumed with guilt.

Brian Lehrer: As for President Biden, he didn't get to Gaza until an hour into his State of the Union address. While he talked in some tougher language than before about the Netanyahu government and humanitarian aid, it's still a joint Netanyahu-Biden war because Biden will not threaten to end the military funding over when he objects to the way in which the war is being carried out. Here's Biden on MSNBC yesterday with an example of that as the host, Jonathan Capehart asked Biden if he has any red line regarding continued military support,

Jonathan Capehart: What is your red line with Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you have a red line? For instance, invasion of Rafah, would you have urged him not to do? Would that be a red line?

Biden: It is a red line but I'm never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical, so there's no red line. I'm going to cut off all weapons, so they don't have the iron dome to protect them. There's red lines that if it crosses and they can-- it cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going after it.

Brian Lehrer: Bottom line, no red line. As far as we could tell the military aid will continue to flow, enabling the war on Netanyahu's terms no matter what words Biden speaks to the world. With me now on the presidential campaign today is Susan B. Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on news from Washington.

Susan also has deep journalistic international affairs experience as editor of Foreign Policy magazine, four years as the Washington Post's Moscow co-bureau chief, covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is the author of the books, Kremlin Rising, The Man Who Ran Washington, and most recently, The Divider, the bestselling history of Donald Trump in the White House, which she co-wrote with her husband, Peter Baker from The New York Times. Susan, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Susan Glasser: Thank you so much, Brian. Great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: For people who see the war in Gaza as having become an atrocity, whether or not they use the word "genocide", Biden might have sounded pretty mealy-mouthed there when asked about a red line for conditioning military aid, even as he denounces some of how the war is being fought. Why won't his actions match his increasingly critical language based on your reporting?

Susan Glasser: Well, look, I found it confusing as well to figure out exactly what he was saying. It's clear in the last few weeks, Brian, that we've been seeing an increasing public distancing between Biden, his administration, and the Netanyahu government. He's placed in just this incredibly awkward position politically speaking, of course, because he had the notion from the very beginning of publicly supporting Israel while privately using that as leverage to influence the shape of the conflict. Unfortunately, there's not much evidence, especially in recent weeks, that he has the leverage that he might have anticipated from taking that public stance.

Politically speaking, he and Netanyahu's interests now have really diverged. Netanyahu, of course, is wildly unpopular in his own country. He has yet to face accountability for his own actions that led, in many ways, to the horror of October 7th. There's a clear sense that if there were to be an election in Israel, he would be thrown out. He has, unfortunately, this political interest in prolonging the conflict at exactly the moment when Biden is increasingly urgent in his desire to push it to come to some kind of an end, or at least a long-term ceasefire. It's really a mess obviously.

Brian Lehrer: Biden said in the clip that a red line, at least in his mind, would be the planned assault on Rafah. Is there anything to indicate that Netanyahu won't just go in when and how he pleases? Because Biden's role seems to be, I don't know, maybe we'd say just another lobbyist even though we're the key funders of the operation or among the key funders of the operation.

Susan Glasser: Again, we don't know what we don't know and what's happening behind the scenes. There's an interesting question about why he hasn't already done that despite threatening it for a long time. There is the question of whether negotiations with Hamas on release of the additional hostages and a ceasefire of whatever duration-- Have those completely broken down? Is this part of the posturing related to that? That's one question that I have right now.

Of course, there's a great urgency, it seems to me putting aside the politics of this. You have the terrible situation of the ongoing and escalating human catastrophe inside Gaza, as well as the hostages who've been there for so long at this point.

My guess is that that still takes priority in terms of American diplomacy in the region. I just wish that there was some kind of a breakthrough that we're not seeing, unfortunately, that hasn't happened. Once again Biden was caught out. Remember, right before the Michigan primary, he said he expected there to be a ceasefire deal within the next week by last Monday, that did not happen, once again, embarrassing the President of the United States it seems to me.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I know those are very difficult negotiations where both Israel and Hamas feel like if a ceasefire takes place on some specific terms versus others it's going to disadvantage one side or the other too much. Those are complex negotiations.

Even in the President's language thinking about the State of the Union address, and you were just describing, as of course everybody knows, the extent of the catastrophe in Gaza at this point, there was an article on Vox where somebody described it as an era-defining catastrophe. It does seem like the kind of thing that's going to be remembered for a long, long time to come.

In fact, obviously the families there but also regional politics for a long, long time to come, but even in the State of the Union address in his language, he started the speech with a fierce urgency of helping Ukraine, but Gaza with 30,000 dead in five months funded by us and he cited that statistic. He seemed to confirm the Hamas statistic on the number of dead, but he shunted it off to the last few minutes of the speech. He lectured Netanyahu to fight differently while feeding him billions to continue. What did you think about the placement of that in the speech relative to Ukraine?

Susan Glasser: I think I wouldn't make false equivalences that's for sure. These are very different and both urgent crises. The scale of the deaths is astonishing and horrible in Gaza. It is also now a number of years into the war in Ukraine. We are looking at enormous scale of deaths that's actually much greater. Let's just hope and pray that the conflict and the fighting does not go on anywhere near that long in Gaza.

The politics are very different for the President. I think his view is that probably the stakes for the geopolitical order are somewhat different as well. He was making a political point with Republicans in Congress who, for basically more than six months, have, at the word of Donald Trump, held up billions of dollars in promised US military assistance to Ukraine.

I think that he was seeing this as really a last chance to push for that kind of assistance before the crisis on the ground in the war in Ukraine becomes really acute.

We're talking again about millions and millions of people displaced. We are talking about tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, dead in this conflict. We are talking about Ukraine and the existential question about whether that country can continue to hold out without the United States' promised military assistance. Again, the President's credibility as a superpower is directly on the line as is that of the United States as well.

Again, are we capable of processing two foreign policy crises at once? That's one of the reasons, I think, frankly, there is a crisis of confidence in the world about the United States which does not seem to be able to deliver on its commitments anymore because of our own internal political divisions.

Brian Lehrer: What did you think about the placement of Ukraine right at the top of the speech, as compared to things that are more domestic? From a political analysis standpoint, Ukraine is probably not the number one thing on most Americans' minds no matter what you and I may think of the urgency of not letting Ukraine fall to Putin, but not the number one thing on most Americans minds. Biden started with that, and later, he got to inflation and other domestic matters. What do you make of it?

Susan Glasser: Look, what he was doing in the speech, and I think this will be a theme that you will hear throughout the re-election campaign, is connecting our own domestic political crises and the threat posed to the United States by Trump and his MAGA movement with a broader international context.

That's the way in which he was talking about the war in Ukraine, not in an abstract way, but I think very much connected with the idea that re-electing of President Donald Trump, who is an open admirer of people like Vladimir Putin, and in fact, would essentially force an end to the US policy of assisting Ukraine, that there's a connection between the internal threats to democracy, a president like Trump, who would essentially both go against the Constitution at home and also be an admirer. He's called Vladimir Putin a strategic genius the same week as Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.

I think that's the context in which Biden was attempting to open his speech. I think as we both know, this is a core belief of Biden's and so we'll be hearing a lot more about it.

Brian Lehrer: Susan Glasser, who covers Washington for The New Yorker with us. 212-433-WNYC, for your calls and texts. Lloyd in Woodbridge, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lloyd.

Lloyd: Hi, Brian. I think Biden is being criticized unfairly for his position with Gaza. Shot of withholding military aid, what can he do? He doesn't run the Israeli government. Contrast that with Trump, how he denigrated Palestinians during his administration. I think he's between a rock and a hard place, and I think he's trying to be tough, but he can't politically withhold the aid. Outside of that, what can he do? That's my point.

Brian Lehrer: Lloyd, thank you. Susan, do you want to answer the question as he asked it?

Susan Glasser: Yes. I think that certainly, Lloyd's point is very reflective of what the analysis of the President and his administration is right now. Politically, essentially caught between two very conflicting and competing imperatives.

What I thought was very interesting that last week, senior administration officials played host to Benny Gantz, who is basically Netanyahu's chief opposition, in many ways in the elections to come. We don't know when exactly. That was a very pointed message they were looking to send to Israelis. Biden was caught on a open mic in the State of the Union talking to Senator Michael Bennet, and basically saying he was fed up with Netanyahu when he was planning to have a "come to Jesus," conversation with the Israeli leader.

I'm surprised. It's interesting to see how much criticism. I understand the criticism coming from many parts of the progressive pro-Palestine left in the United States to Biden, but in the context of the US election, Donald Trump was probably the most flamboyantly supportive of Netanyahu of any leader we've had, essentially turned over American policy in the region and to Netanyahu in a way that we've never seen any president, Democrat or Republican, do. It's really interesting to me that the critics of Biden from within his own coalition haven't focused on the lack of a meaningful alternative in Trump. It's quite remarkable in this election year.

Brian Lehrer: Have you been covering Trump on this point? From the little I've seen, it seems to me that he's trying to lay low on this issue, and he's not saying explicitly how he would be different from Biden or how he would be the same as Biden, in supporting Israel in the war in Gaza as it's being fought.

Susan Glasser: Well, there's one big difference, Brian, which is that Donald Trump, like Netanyahu, is not really a supporter of the two-state solution. There's just no question about that. It's interesting, I agree with you that politically, Trump, I imagine, sees advantage in having Biden's own coalition be mad at him so he doesn't want to get in between that internal argument to a large extent.

Also, as we reported in The Divider, people might have missed the fact that Trump really got personally angry with Netanyahu in the final year of his administration, and in particular after the 2020 election. Why? Because Netanyahu called up Biden and congratulated him on his victory over Donald Trump in 2020. Trump turned American foreign policy instrument of his own policy, and so with Donald Trump, everything is personal. There is the element of basically still holding a grudge against Netanyahu for recognizing Biden's victory.

Look, we did an entire chapter on our book devoted to what was Trump's and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner's record with Israel in the Middle East, and it's quite a forgotten story, it seems to me. Our collective amnesia around what Trump did when he was in the White House is pretty amazing to me.

Brian Lehrer: On the caller from Woodbridge's other point, saying that politically, Biden can't cut off military aid to Israel, do you think that's true? Is there a sort of political calculus in Biden's mind? He seems to have strong beliefs of his own that applies to Ukraine, as well as the politics. What do you think about a political calculus here? You think the Biden campaign is looking at, "Well, the pro-Israel, don't cut it off, no matter what Netanyahu does," lobby? We get commenters all the time saying, "Hey, this is AIPAC flexing its muscles," versus the pressure from the progressive left within the Democratic coalition.

Is there a power struggle there that Biden is, at least according to the caller there who's a Biden supporter who thinks Biden is acting fairly and rationally, just too weighted in one direction?

Susan Glasser: Well, again, the promise suggested there's some difference between a political calculation by the President and what he actually thinks. It seems to me in this instance, Brian, Biden's political instincts and his personal policy instincts converge here. It would be very hard, and he is, at core, a supporter of Israel for decades, and its right to exist. I don't think that makes him or anyone an uncritical supporter of Israel. In this situation, what we've heard very clearly from the administration is increasing frustration, and even anger towards Netanyahu, but a set of questions around, what are they really going to do? What are viable alternatives for them?

I have heard from my sources in the administration, in the White House, and in the State Department, a sense that this is really Biden himself dictating the constraints and the contours of the policy here, and the response. My guess is that it was a different Democratic president in office, you might have not had such full-throated and fulsome backing of Israel, Netanyahu at the very beginning of the war, but again right now, what you hear very loudly and clearly from them is they're willing to consider things that they weren't willing to consider even a few weeks earlier.

We'll see where this goes. I thought that the announcement that they would go ahead and build an emergency pier off of Gaza to provide humanitarian aid, essentially acknowledging that they needed to bypass the blockade of their own ally, that was a remarkable difference in tone from the administration.

Brian Lehrer: I heard on the BBC over the weekend, on our air, that Israel says, "This is not going around Israel, the building of the pier, or the drops of humanitarian aid from the air," that this is in cooperation in conjunction with Israel. They had a person from an aid organization who was saying, "These are just drops in the bucket, whether by sea or by air," compared to the amount of aid that's actually needed, and the only way to get enough aid in is for Israel to open more land routes and that the biggest issue is the distribution of the aid once it gets in. Dropping it from the air or bringing some into the port by sea is maybe a little better than symbolic, but not that much.

You hear those things from both sides, Israel saying, "No, no, this is not in opposition to us. We're working together on this. We're all for this," and the aid agencies saying, "Meh."

Susan Glasser: Yes, I think that's right and I think the bottom line is, it's on Israel why there aren't more land crossings and why there have been such an anemic flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza so far. I've heard just absolute private outreach from administration officials here in Washington on that subject. Absolutely, it's on Israel, period, that part of it, that humanitarian aid part of it.

They haven't met commitments that they've been giving to the US and other partners on the land crossings, which is why you're seeing this decision to go build a sea opening, which, by the way, I think one of the problems is that it will take a while to get it up and running as well.

Brian Lehrer: One more on this and then I'm going to ask you about other things you wrote after the State of the Union about the state of the campaign post-speech. Mark in Princeton, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Yes, thank you, Brian. Susan Glasser, I once saw you and your husband speak at Princeton University. Wonderful talk. Listen, the comment that Susan just made a moment ago about Netanyahu extending the war for political gain, that's absolutely an astounding assessment and I'm sure it's true. Humanitarian values must be put in the forefront here. There must be a permanent ceasefire, all the hostages must be released, and if that means a few Palestinian prisoners have to be released, so be it, and movement must be made to rehabilitate the entire situation.

Netanyahu was partially responsible for October 7th in the way that he was paying attention to his own political issues, his own criminal issues. He's being charged with corruption, his far-right extremists who were very much a part of Trumpian concepts, the continuing expansion of the West Bank, Israeli settlements in the West Bank. We can't let this man continue to dictate the actions going on throughout the Middle East just because of his own political situation.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, let me follow up on one thing that you said near the beginning of your remark, calling for a permanent ceasefire, which is a lot of what we hear from the protesters who are more and more dogging Biden on almost any stop that he makes. The pushback to that is a permanent ceasefire gives Hamas too much of a victory. It allows Hamas to keep its remaining military infrastructure in place.

Hamas will never agree to a permanent ceasefire and they won't give up all the hostages under those circumstances because then Israel will have no incentive not to go in and what Israel sees as finishing the job, whether or not that really finishes the job. Permanent ceasefire gives Hamas too much. What do you say?

Mark: Well, it depends how you use the word "permanent". If both sides agree to stop fighting, then it's on Hamas because if Israel agrees to stop fighting, and indeed, I believe they would follow up on that, I believe they would cease all action, if that's an agreement.

Brian Lehrer: Whether the protesters demanding that Hamas also abide by a ceasefire, it doesn't seem like what Biden is being demanded of.

Mark: Both sides agreed to a ceasefire. If Hamas breaks the ceasefire, then it's going to be clear to everyone who were the true perpetrators of the continuing issue.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, thank you for all of that. Susan, anything on that?

Susan Glasser: Well, look, I think this back-and-forth you just had illustrates the horrible conundrum that the world is in as a result of this. The Israeli argument would be there was a ceasefire, and it was broken by Hamas on October 7th with its attack on Israel.

Again, we're just in one of these horrible spirals of violence but it is interesting to me and I think very significant, the political blowback that Biden is continuing to take. A lot of what you're hearing from Democrats is, "Enough, let's try to move this into a better state right now."

I'm very skeptical. Ramadan has begun today in the Middle East, and unfortunately, for so many reasons, it does not look like Hamas is willing to accept the deal that has been on the table right now for ceasefire and release of additional hostages.

Brian Lehrer: The headline on your post State of the Union article in The New Yorker was, "So much for 'sleepy Joe': Biden's rowdy, shouty State of the Union." Is it too early here, four days later, to know if it's served the political purpose of countering the fears of Democrats and swing voters that he's not up to the job anymore?

Susan Glasser: Well, I will be interested to see, as I'm sure you will, whether this speech which got basically good reviews among those it was aimed at-- Republicans didn't like it. It wasn't a speech aimed at Republicans. It seemed to me that it was a speech that was aimed at wavering Democrats and independents who might vote Democratic to reassure them that Biden was really up to the job of a second term, that he was in the fight. I will be looking to see whether that has any tangible and lasting effect on the polls and on Biden standing there.

What's been striking to me up until now has been the real immutability of the polls. Last year as well, in 2023, Biden had a pretty well-regarded State of the Union. It made no lasting political difference on his standing. If anything, he came into the 2024 State of the Union worse by most metrics in terms of his standing. Democrats just haven't consolidated and rallied round their standard bearer to the extent to which Republicans have consolidated around Donald Trump. That's what I'll be looking for.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote, and this would be the last question, that you couldn't remember a single case of the State of the Union rescuing a troubled presidency. Did you have any particular comparisons in mind?

Susan Glasser: Well, that's what's notable. These speeches generally are very forgettable, certainly as rhetoric and as pieces of writing. I've watched many, many of them over the last few decades, Brian, and I can't quote a lot of memorable lines or insights from them. It's a moment along the way and that's the problem for Biden this year. There's many downsides to big appearances like this, one stumble, a series of gaffes. That could be really politically damaging to him. At the same time, it's hard to see where he gets the upside, where he breaks through in a positive way.

That's really, I think, what we'll be seeing. Did he manage to reassure his own constituency heading into this very long general election campaign?

Brian Lehrer: Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker where she writes a weekly column on Biden's Washington. Her most recent book with her husband, Peter Baker, from The New York Times, is called The Divider, best selling history of Donald Trump in the White House. Susan Glasser, thanks, as always.

Susan Glasser: Thank you very much.

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