Watch: Jake Sullivan Squirms as He's Nailed on NBC for Horrendous Comment on Middle East

We've seen the Biden team have to play catch-up when it comes to the question of the Hamas attack on Israel. It was an attack long in the planning that was quite involved. So that raised the big question -- how was it missed by intelligence agencies? Why did the Biden team have no clue it was in the works?

Biden told "60 Minutes" Sunday that there was nothing they couldn't do. But they completely missed the attack, similar to how he's gotten so many other things wrong throughout his political life.

One of the reasons for that might be how clueless his team is. I wrote previously about the comment National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made the week before the attack, bragging that the Middle East was quieter than it had been in two decades. He spoke about the Israeli and Palestinian situation and said challenges remained, but "the amount of time I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East compared to any of my predecessors, going back to 9/11, is significantly reduced."

"Why was your assessment there so off the mark?" Kristen Welker asked him during Sunday's episode of "Meet the Press."

"Jake, how was your assessment [that 'the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades'] so off the mark?"

Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan: No it wasn't pic.twitter.com/Tj4XXsHkAA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 15, 2023

I'm amused by the deep sigh at the beginning and the excessive blinking as he tries to explain it all away. He can't even be straight about being wrong, as he claims he made those comments in the context of talking about the "wider Middle East region." Um, no, you specifically mentioned Israel and the Palestinians.

Sullivan is making those excuses even after they've just played the video showing clearly what he said. That shows just how shameless he truly is.

Sullivan explained he had said that this was "for now" and it could all change. It's true that he said that. But the point being made by Welker and many others was that no, it wasn't truly quiet if this attack was in the works and he missed it. Sullivan doesn't seem to know the concept of the "quiet before the storm." He thought he could spend "less time" because things were "quiet," and maybe that's why he missed it. Or maybe they were spending too much time trying to play footsie with Iran and funneling money into the region. They wouldn't admit how wrong they were about that either, which probably helped enable the attack.

It should be noted former President Donald Trump brought a measure of peace to the Middle East with the Abraham Accords and the defeat of ISIS. But Sullivan wanted to ignore that in his retelling of the history of the last two decades.

Incompetence has been the characteristic of the Biden team on every level, foreign and domestic, and it's going to continue to hurt us until Biden is out of office. Worse, they can never admit when they are wrong.

You cannot correct the errors you don’t recognize. This is the cardinal sin. Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine, Iran, Hamas…what will it take for this administration to admit an error and reverse course. How many icebergs do we need to hit before we change course? https://t.co/6WlwxhrGfO
— Robert Greenway (@RC_Greenway) October 15, 2023