With no fanfare or acknowledgment, Biden hosts White House meeting with Muslim leaders

President Joe Biden quietly hosted a meeting Thursday for a handful of Muslim leaders, according to four sources familiar with the White House gathering.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden quietly hosted a meeting Thursday for a handful of Muslim leaders, according to four sources familiar with the White House gathering, as he faces pressure from the Arab American community over what they contend is his comparative disregard for the Palestinian civilian deaths and domestic threats arising from the war between Israel and Hamas.

The White House neither announced the afternoon meeting in advance nor even confirmed that it happened — a vivid contrast to the approach taken when Biden met with Jewish leaders four days after the war began. At that event, Biden gave televised remarks in which he reaffirmed his “unshakeable” bond with Israel and people of the Jewish faith.

One person who attended the session on Thursday said they would have preferred if the White House acknowledged the meeting and publicized the president's remarks.

“The optics don’t look good,” the attendee said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely about the discussion with Biden. “We hope the White House moves forward with providing equal measures of transparency, inclusion and respect.”

For all the secrecy the White House attached to the meeting, some of the participants appeared happy to discuss it. A second attendee, Rami Nashashibi of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, held a news conference in Chicago on Friday to lay out what took place.