Good morning, everyone. I'm Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza. It's Tuesday, October 10th. Obviously,

what's driving the day here in Washington and around the world is the war in the Middle East.

Joining me to discuss how the crisis is affecting Washington, at the White House, in Congress,

and out on the 2024 campaign trail

is national security reporter Alex Ward.

Alex, let's start with the White House.

I want to sort of go around White House Congress and broader 2024 politics and get a sense

of what we know about the response from various political actors and how it may or may not affect things.

Just briefly, I know we could spend a long time on this, but let's start with the B.B. Biden relationship before this crisis.

What was it like on the precipice of the Hamas attack on Israel? I mean, it was pretty

rocky. I mean, one interesting thing is that Biden-Bee get along personally pretty well. In fact,

their personal relationship is perhaps one reason why the U.S.-Israel relationship was not

fully broken. However, Israel's far-right government, the way it had been treating Palestinians, the settler

movement, and a bunch of other factors were sort of hurting the U.S.-Israel relationship,

save for the fact that the U.S. was working with Israel and Saudi Arabia to create a normalization

deal.

So it was very workman-like.

But you could tell it hadn't moved beyond that when Biden never invited Netanyahu to come to

the White House for a meeting. So it's touch and go. However, Biden has made extremely clear the U.S.

will always stand by Israel. Israel is always a great partner. So regardless of the current political

turmoil or the current moment, let's say, the U.S.'s relationship would remain strong on the broad

end, regardless of how rocky it was, sort of on the shorter end.

...