WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden will try to sell Americans on his approach to conflicts in Israel and Ukraine in a prime-time White House address on Thursday, a day after his Middle East trip was upended by a hospital blast in the Gaza Strip.
His televised remarks are scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on Thursday (0000 GMT on Friday), while the US House of Representatives remains without a leader needed to pass Biden's expected funding requests for the wars.
In only the second prime-time Oval Office address of his nearly three years as president, Biden will seek support from citizens and lawmakers growing wary of sending billions of dollars overseas to support conflicts with no end in sight.
The White House has said Biden will unveil his additional funding request this week.
The administration is considering $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Israel, said a source familiar with the matter. The package is also expected to include tens of billions in funding for priorities from Asia to US border security.
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In Tel Aviv on Wednesday, the president pledged $100 million in new funding for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and said he would ask Congress for unprecedented aid to boost Israel's fight with Hamas.
"This will also be very much a message to the American people: how those conflicts connect to our lives back here, how support from the American people and the Congress, frankly, is essential," US deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told MSNBC.
Any funding measure must pass both the Democratic-led US Senate, where additional aid has bipartisan support, and the Republican-led House, which has not had a speaker for 17 days.
Conservative Jim Jordan, an ally of former President Donald Trump, told his colleagues on Thursday that he will pause his bid to serve as speaker and back Republican Patrick McHenry filling the role on a temporary basis.
Republicans in the House are also divided over whether to back more aid, with some far-right conservatives especially opposed to money for Ukraine. Biden is a Democrat.
House Republican lawmakers in recent weeks nearly brought government to a halt over chronic budget deficits and $31.4 trillion in debt, threatening to slash government spending across the board.
The potential elevation of McHenry could allow Congress to get back to work and ease a path for some of Biden's spending plans. McHenry has supported aid for Ukraine.
About four in 10 respondents in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last week said the US should support Israel's position when given a range of options.
In a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this month, roughly the same proportion agreed with a statement that Washington "should provide weapons to Ukraine."
"By bringing these two issues together, it will enable Biden to have a conversation with the nation not just about wars that are taking place in isolation, but conflict globally that has significant repercussions for American security interests as a whole," said Carmiel Arbit, a senior fellow at Atlantic Council, a think tank.
Biden returned overnight from a brief Israel trip aimed at offering US support following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli villages and military bases. Biden's planned summit in Jordan joined by the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders was canceled after the Gaza hospital explosion.
Finer, the US official, said humanitarian aid was expected to enter Gaza within the next day or so, and echoed Biden's warning that it not be misappropriated for use by Hamas.
Meanwhile, the USS Mount Whitney, a sophisticated command, control, communication and intelligence ship, is heading to the eastern Mediterranean to join a host of US warships already there, the US Navy said.
A US official and a congressional aide told Reuters that the US Defense Department told members of Congress at a briefing on Wednesday that it intends to send its two Iron Dome missile defense systems back to Israel as part of a leaseback deal, having experimented with the systems for several years.
The transfer could come within days, the aide said.
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