Let me finish with this crapstorm Benjamin Netanyahu started.
All he had to do to avoid all this fighting with Washington was to speak out. That’s what he could have done — “speak out” the second he heard that the invitation for him to address the U.S. Congress was issued without the knowledge of the American president.
All he had to do was say I will only come if this invitation is bipartisan and certainly only if the President of the United States has approved it.
All he had to do was that, just say “I don’t like the way this has been handled. I had no intention of doing this under the table, no intention of disrespecting the President of the United States, because even if we disagree I will not abuse the historic ties between our two countries, our historic ties with Democrats and Republicans alike.
So here’s the story here. If there is a problem next week — and I can only assume that this whole business has been handled so badly there is bound to be — if there is trouble and bad blood, the culprits are John Boehner and Bibi. They knew what they were doing. They stuck to their line of attack, which means they must very well want this thing to have gone the way it did — the way it is heading right now through next Tuesday.
Here’s a thought. The prime minister can say right at the front of his remarks that he didn’t know — nobody told him that the president was not duly informed of his invitation — and he is sorry the whole thing went the way it did. Just say you didn’t know this whole thing was carried out in the dark. That’s if you were “not” party to this subterfuge. If you were, if Mr. Prime Minister, you knew from the outset that this was all a way to blindside the president and therefore humiliate him, we’ll that’s the problem, isn’t it!
Chris Matthews