Considering the glut of bad news he’s endured in recent months, President Biden actually had a pretty good holiday weekend: wandering the cobbled streets of Nantucket with his family, visiting a bookshop, and doing some shopping, before watching the island’s annual Christmas tree lighting and enjoying a Thanksgiving feast at the compound of Carlyle billionaire David Rubenstein. Nice lil’ Thursday, right?
For the rest of us, though, the real highlight was the president’s appearance before the traveling press at the White Elephant, a harborside hotel. Biden announced that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a four-day pause in fighting, allowing for the release of 50 hostages kidnapped by Hamas militants in October, including a 4-year-old American girl. He called the deal the result of “extensive U.S. diplomacy” and said he’d been working the phones for weeks to make it happen.
