WaPo Columnist Hails Trump for Achieving in Gaza Deal What Biden ‘Could Never Do’
In a surprising admission from a prominent voice on the left, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius openly praised President Donald J. Trump for securing a historic truce between Israel and Hamas — a diplomatic breakthrough he said Joe Biden “could never do.”
Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday, Ignatius reflected on the deal President Trump announced the night before — a “historic” peace framework that begins with a ceasefire and the first exchange of hostages and prisoners between the two sides.
President Trump posted on Truth Social that “ALL of the hostages will be released very soon” as part of the deal, calling the agreement “unprecedented.”
During the MSNBC discussion, host Joe Scarborough acknowledged that both Israeli and Arab leaders believed Trump was uniquely capable of resolving the conflict. “If anyone was going to be able to resolve it,” Scarborough said, “it would be Donald Trump.”
Ignatius agreed, recounting his conversations with Israeli officials after the October 7 attacks:
“An Israeli senior official said to me, we are so disoriented and traumatized by this war. The United States is going to have to make decisions for us. Joe Biden could never do that. And Donald Trump was able to do it.”
He credited Trump’s decisive leadership for ending the bloodshed and preventing Israel from annexing the West Bank — something many in Israel’s right-wing government had supported. Ignatius said Trump’s actions showed Middle Eastern leaders he was “serious” about peace and that he effectively worked “behind the scenes week by week” with the help of businessman Steve Witkoff, whom Ignatius described as an “unlikely emissary.”
“That is something that Joe Biden, for all his desire for peace, wasn’t able to do,” Ignatius concluded.
Earlier in the segment, Ignatius further acknowledged Trump’s strategic strength:
“This war was blocked for two years. President Biden, who preceded him, was unable to find a way to stop it. President Trump found that way by being tough on both sides… There’s no way that I can see that this would have been done without Trump’s pressure in the final hours.”
Even New York Times columnist Elisabeth Bumiller echoed that sentiment, saying during the discussion that Israelis across the political spectrum believed “only Donald Trump” could secure a peace deal of this magnitude.
“These are not all Israelis who are big fans of Donald Trump,”* Bumiller said. “But they just felt that he alone in the world had the kind of leverage and the kind of pressure he could put on Netanyahu to get this done.”
Bumiller described the celebrations erupting across Israel as citizens rejoiced over the long-awaited peace, contrasting it with the despair she witnessed there just last year under Biden’s leadership.
“You have to give Donald Trump this victory for now,”* she said, calling it a “very, very positive, happy day at this moment.”
While challenges remain — including the future governance of Gaza and Hamas’s potential disarmament — even mainstream media voices are now conceding that President Trump achieved what his predecessor could not: real movement toward peace in the Middle East.