Rep. Ro Khanna of California went on Fox News expecting sympathy for what he described as a harrowing detention in the West Bank. What he got instead was a live televised unraveling of his entire narrative, and it was something to behold.
As Trending Politics reported, the Democratic congressman clashed with host Gillian Turner on Monday's "America's Newsroom" over what actually went down during his trip to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory. Khanna's version of events involves armed Israeli settlers surrounding his delegation's van with assault rifles and Israeli soldiers then showing up and siding with the settlers against Americans. Sounds terrifying. Also sounds like it has some holes in it.
The Israeli Defense Forces offered a rather different account, stating that troops "were dispatched to the scene, quickly dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road." They added that IDF soldiers "did not take part in blocking that road." So one side says it was a hostage situation and the other side says they showed up, told everyone to knock it off, and opened the road. Quite the gap.
Turner asked the question that was sitting right there on a tee: "Did you really not know that going into a restricted military area, guarded by local security forces, was going to result in your entourage getting stopped?" Khanna insisted it was not a restricted military area and that "American Congress people had been there before." Turner's response was chef's kiss level brevity: "With prior coordination."
That is when Khanna pivoted to the classic congressional move of trying to steamroll the interviewer. "If I could just finish, please, because this should be an outrage to any American citizen, what happened," he said. Nothing says "I have a rock solid argument" like asking people to stop poking at it.
Things got worse when Turner brought up comments from Israeli Ambassador Michael Leiter, who said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that the Israeli Embassy in Washington had tried to coordinate the trip with Khanna's office. Leiter said he urged the congressman to meet with survivors of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and visit Israel's borders to understand the security situation. "He ignored that," Leiter said.
Khanna's response to this was to accuse the ambassador of lying. "The ambassador is lying. We did inform him," Khanna told Turner. He added that he wanted a "Palestinian-led trip" because he had already visited Israel three times and gotten their perspective. Fair enough, but "I informed them" and "I coordinated with them" are two very different things, kind of like how "I told my wife I was going skydiving" is different from "my wife agreed I should go skydiving."
Khanna also said he had visited with a U.S. hostage family "many times" as they fought for their son's release, which is commendable but does not exactly address why he skipped coordination on this particular trip.
The whole episode is a masterclass in what happens when a congressman builds a narrative designed for maximum outrage on social media and then has to defend it in front of someone willing to ask follow-up questions. Khanna wanted to be the story. He got his wish, just not the version he had in mind.
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