A top adviser to President Biden is facing criticism over a comment he made shortly before the Hamas attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n
Biden\u2019s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the Middle East was the calmest it has been in decades, bringing to the forefront other controversial foreign policy decisions the Biden adviser has been involved with over the last decade.<\/p>\n
\u2018What we said is want to depressurize, de-escalate, and ultimately integrate the Middle East region,\u2019 Sullivan said at \u2018The Atlantic Festival\u2019 on September 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The war in Yemen is in its 19th month of truce, for now the Iranian attacks against U.S. forces have stopped, our presence in Iraq is stable, I emphasize for now because all of that can change and the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
Eight days later, Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed at least 1,200 Israelis causing many conservatives to blast Sullivan\u2019s comments on social media.<\/p>\n
\u2018We are less safe with this Biden team,\u2019 former Trump Acting Director of the United States National Intelligence Richard Grenell posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, in response to Sullivan\u2019s comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Matthew Brodsky, senior fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, wrote on X that Sullivan\u2019s comment was an \u2018outright lie at the time he said it.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sullivan has been at the center of several controversies in recent years, many of which have been brought up by conservatives on social media in light of his Middle East comment, including the Biden administration\u2019s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
In the days following the Biden administration\u2019s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Sullivan and the State Department were criticized for being unable to say exactly how many Americans had been left behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On August 22, 2021, more than a week after frenzied scenes of evacuating Afghans at the Kabul airport began to surface, Sullivan admitted that the administration did not know how many Americans were still in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u2018We cannot give you a precise number,\u2019 Sullivan told CNN. \u2018We believe it is several thousand Americans who we are working with now to try to get safely out of the country.\u2019<\/p>\n
At one point, it was believed that nearly 450 Americans were still stuck in the country two months after the U.S. withdrawal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sullivan said on August 16 that \u2018the president did not think it was inevitable that the Taliban were going to take control of Afghanistan\u2019 and that the situation devolved at \u2018unexpected speed.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018He should\u2019ve lost his job after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal,\u2019 Abigail Jackson, press secretary for GOP Senator Josh Hawley, posted on X on Sunday.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the top oversight Republican in Congress called for the removal of Sullivan from his position due to his position at the \u2018epicenter\u2019 of failed foreign policy decisions over the last ten years including the Benghazi terror attack that killed 3 American contractors and a U.S. Ambassador.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sullivan served as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton\u2019s former deputy chief of staff and policy adviser at the State Department during the 2012 attack on U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.<\/p>\n
\u2018From Benghazi to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Jake Sullivan has been at the epicenter of the worst foreign policy crises and decisions over the past decade,\u2019 Ranking Member on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Kentucky Rep. James Comer, told Fox News Digital at the time. \u2018Given this administration\u2019s tendency to create self-inflicted crises, it\u2019s no surprise Jake Sullivan has been given a top post at the Biden White House.\u2019<\/p>\n
A source involved in Libya policy in Washington throughout Clinton\u2019s tenure, speaking on background, told Fox News Digital in 2020 that Sullivan was a prominent \u2014 albeit quiet \u2014 player in the controversial U.S. overthrow of Libya with Clinton\u2019s unflinching support.<\/p>\n
Republicans also raised questions about Sullivan this past summer, Fox News Digital reported, after it was revealed that Sullivan served with Hunter Biden on the board of the Truman National Security Project, a liberal foreign policy think tank, for roughly two years before Sullivan joined the Biden campaign in 2020.<\/p>\n
During the Clinton presidential campaign, Sullivan also notoriously pushed the Trump-Russia collusion narrative to reporters. He told members of the House Intelligence committee in a December 2017 interview that prior to the 2016 election he briefed reporters on his suspicions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018[B]asically we sat with them and walked through what we understood to be the case from \u2014 in terms of the DNC hack and leak, what we believed to be the case with respect to Russian involvement,\u2019 Sullivan said, \u2018and then what we thought the upshot of this was, which is you now have the start of a much more aggressive phase of an intelligence-led operation by foreign power, and there\u2019s likely to be more as we go forward, and people should really pay attention to this.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Jake Sullivan has a lot to answer for,\u2019 GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee,\u00a0told Fox News Digital earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018He has repeatedly lied for perceived political gain \u2013 whether that be about the Russia Collusion hoax or the Hunter Biden laptop. And now he\u2019s Biden\u2019s national security adviser? He should resign immediately.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sullivan was recently accused by former White House official Mike McCormick of being a \u2018conspirator\u2019 in the Biden family\u2019s \u2018kickback scheme\u2019 in Ukraine when Biden was vice president.<\/p>\n
Sullivan denied the allegations, telling reporters that he had nothing to do with such an operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sullivan has also been criticized in the past for his involvement in the U.S. foreign policy dealings in Syria and Myanmar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During a 2019 interview with the New Yorker, Sullivan said it was \u2018a great regret of mine\u2019 that \u2018we were not able to\u00a0more effectively play a role in stopping hundreds of thousands of people from dying in Syria and millions and millions more losing their homes.\u2019<\/p>\n
The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox News Digital\u2019s Cameron Cawthorne and Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.<\/p>\n