Senior Communications Adviser Andrew Bates hit back during a social media feud by pointing a finger at reports ex-President Donald Trump gave away Israeli intelligence secrets as president, at a time when questions swirl about how Hamas got around Israel’s defenses to carry out their horrific terrorist assault.

As violence raged in Israel Monday, critics of President Joe Biden attacked the president over the announcement of a White House press “lid” at 11:46 a.m., which indicates there are no public events expected the rest of the day.

Bates responded to a tweet from Fox News anchor John Roberts by pushing back on critics, writing:

For those unfamiliar, a “lid” is just a courtesy announcement to reporters that they should not expect public events.

A lid does *not* mean the President has stopped working, as is implied in the *Fox* tweet below.

On the contrary, he’s working to support Israel all day

He included a rundown of President Biden’s activities.

When ex-Trump White House senior adviser Stephen Miller objected, Bates responded by accusing Miller of projecting, and by asking if the Trump administration had an “executive time”-style euphemism for giving away Israeli intel:

The link in the tweet refers to an infamous May 2017 Oval Office meeting between Trump and  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

Multiple outlets reported that Trump divulged classified information derived from s Israeli intelligence. At the time, The New York Times raised the possibility that information could be passed to Iran.

While Bates was cagey about the implications of the story to the present crisis in Israel, the narrative that Trump could be responsible for the intelligence failure that enabled Hamas to surprise Israel began to take hold almost immediately among some high-profile social media liberals.

The suggestion that Iran could have shared information gleaned from Trump — in that meeting or some other unknown circumstance — with Hamas began rocketing around social media shortly after the attacks began, and questions about the intelligence failure swirled.

Ex-presidential niece Mary Trump and others shared more pointed accusations, buttressed by the Oval Office meeting as well as more  circumstantial factors to connect Trump to the attacks this past weekend:

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