Here's Why Blinken Had to Briefly Pause His Senate Testimony

Spencer Brown | October 31, 2023 11:15 AM

Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken — joined by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin — testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday morning, but things did not go smoothly when a Hamas sympathizer in the audience stood up and began shouting about the need for a "ceasefire now" while being escorted out of the hearing room by an officer.

Watch:

"CEASEFIRE NOW" Karen gets dragged out of senate committee hearing where Secretary Blinken is testifying. pic.twitter.com/0LXVhivTWm
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Calls for a ceasefire, of course, are in line with the demands of Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip who have continued launching rocket attacks at Israelis civilians for more than three weeks straight following their massacre of more than 1,400 innocent people in the terrorist attacks of October 7. They would like nothing more than to have Israel stop responding to ongoing attacks in order to allow the Iran-backed terrorists to fight another day.

The hearing, which continues at this hour, is part of Senate appropriators' review of the national security supplemental request from President Joe Biden, announced in the Oval Office during the president's primetime address earlier this month.

As Blinken summarized in his prepared testimony, the supplemental funding request includes $3.7 billion for Israel's "security needs including to help Israel bolster its air and missile defense systems" and grant "additional authority to drawdown DOD stocks" while enhancing "U.S. embassy security"— in addition to $16.3 billion for Ukraine to "ensure" the country "can sustain the economic base and recovery its war effort depends on and to supply its defense" in order to "not only rebuild Ukraine's economy and offset the damage wrought by Russia, but also reimagine it: investing in new industries, infrastructure, and supply chains connected to Europe and the world."

Blinken's prepared remarks for the committee also claimed that America's "adversaries and competitors recognize our strategies are working," despite the fact that the Biden administration's bumbling about on the world stage has shown weakness and invited aggression from those adversaries and competitors.