State Department press secretary Tammy Bruce seemed to blame aid shortages in Gaza on the UN World Food Programme and its chief, Cindy McCain, on Tuesday as she answered a question about trucks carrying food, water and medicine into the ravaged Gaza Strip.
Bruce was questioned at a press briefing about aid trucks traveling into Gaza at the Kerem Shalom crossing, which resumed last Monday after a three-month blockade imposed by the Israeli military.
The State Department spokeswoman appeared to be unaware of any blockade, and seemed to misunderstand the intent of NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell’s question as Bruce quipped that McCain should have “spoken up” about finding a way to get aid into Gaza sooner. Bruce’s remark came in response to a question about McCain’s own comments Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation about the resumption of the truck crossings.
“This is, however, the first delivery of major aid, if not the only aid we’ve been hearing for months. I wish that Cindy McCain had spoken up that they had found a way to move food into Gaza, because that certainly hadn’t been conveyed to us,” said Bruce on Tuesday. “But now – which, if that’s the case, that’s great.”
McCain had refuted claims on Face the Nation from the U.S. and Israeli governments blaming Hamas for supposedly looting aid trucks. In actuality, she said, Palestinian residents of Gaza were so desperate for food after a three-month blockade that starving people were rushing aid trucks on the road.
“Listen, these people are desperate, They see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it,” McCain said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything.”
Trucks have entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing at a rate of about 100 per day, McCain said on Sunday.
That statistic makes Bruce’s reference to a singular aid delivery all the more bewildering — especially given that the holdup has never been a result of the World Food Programme or the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), its partner, being unable to “find” ways to get aid across the border. All crossings are controlled by the Israeli government with the exception of the Rafah crossing, which is controlled by Egypt. Israel’s government has demanded that any physical aid delivered to Gaza must cross through an Israeli-controlled point of entry.
Bruce’s misunderstanding was revealed in the rest of her exchange with Mitchell.
Until “now there has been a blockade, a blockade by Israel of the food, so no one has been able to get through those crossings,” Mitchell explained to the press secretary.
“Well, I thought you just said Cindy McCain said that she was able to do that. But I would also say that this process managed to overcome that dynamic, and the dynamic has changed,” Bruce said, before beginning to repeat that “whatever it was” blocking aid had been resolved.
“Israel was blocking it,” Mitchell spelled out again.
Bruce noted: “It clearly needs to expand. I don’t speak for this foundation, but clearly we’ve got to welcome any dynamic that allows getting aid and food into the region, which is happening right now. And that’s the story.”
The Independent reached out to the State Department for further comment.
Tuesday’s briefing is not the first time Bruce, a veteran of Fox News on her first assignment in the federal government, has seemed to have been caught off guard at a press briefing thanks to a lack of preparedness or communication throughout the broader administration or even just her agency.
In one moment at a briefing on May 1, the press secretary declined to comment on an announcement that occurred during her news conference stating that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be taking on a second role as national security adviser: “I just heard this from you,” she told ad reporter.
During an interview with CNN days later she got into a back-and-forth with anchor Kasie Hunt after refusing to answer repeated questions about Rubio’s work at the agency, including whether the secretary had spoken with El Salvador’s president regarding a man the Trump administration has alternated between admitting and refusing to admit that it deported illegally, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
After Bruce said she wouldn’t comment on Rubio’s basic day-to-day actions as secretary, an exasperated Hunt responded, “You’re the spokeswoman for the State Department! I mean, with all due respect, like … ?”
