Senator ‘disgusted’ by White House’s handling of Netanyahu visit

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Friday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserved a warmer welcome from White House officials during his visit to Washington earlier this week.

Hatch, the Senate’s most senior Republican, said the Obama administration treated Netanyahu rudely during his stay.  

“I was basically disgusted by the way the White House handled this,” Hatch said on USA Today’s Capital Download. “I’ll tell you, we’re coming to the opinion up here on Capitol Hill, many of us, that they’ve hired a lot of young people down there [who] don’t know what they’re doing.” 

Hatch said such officials acted “like a bunch of spoiled brats” during Netanyahu’s visit.

“They looked ridiculous in world-wide matters, in foreign policy,” he added.

Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress Tuesday, delivering a fiery address where he urged the United States to turn away from a “bad deal” with Iran that he said will allow the country to obtain nuclear weapons.

Obama and Netanyahu have long had a strained relationship, which came to the fore earlier this year when an administration official called the Israeli leader a “chickens—t” in an interview.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) exacerbated tensions by inviting Netanyahu to speak without notifying the White House first. Democrats sharply criticized the gesture, and over 50 Democratic lawmakers boycotted Tuesday’s address.

President Obama panned Netanyahu’s speech as “nothing new” on Tuesday. He did not attend the event, nor did Vice President Biden or Secretary of State John Kerry.

Hatch said on Friday the administration’s snubs were bad diplomatic form. He said Obama or other prominent White House officials should have attended the address.

“Now, it might have been better protocol to let the president know, but he knew,” Hatch said of Boehner’s invite. “All that they had to do was say, ‘Well, we’re disappointed that we weren’t consulted, but we welcome the prime minister and we’d surely like to meet with him while he’s here.’ They didn’t do that.”