President Joe Biden stopped short Friday of backing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) call to hold new elections in Israel but did not criticize him over the comments like other members of Congress have.

Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the federal government, issued a blistering critique of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, saying that a “new election is the only way” to end the tension between Israel and the Palestinian people. Schumer said he was not seeking to have the United States interfere in foreign elections and said that the election should be held “once the war starts to wind down.”

Biden broke his silence on the matter Friday while hosting Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at the White House.

“Sen. Schumer contacted my staff, my senior staffer, that he was going to make that speech. And I’m not going to elaborate on the speech,” the president told reporters. “He made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him but by many Americans.”

Though Biden steadfastly backed Netanyahu in the days following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, he has gradually distanced himself from the Israel Defense Forces’s offensive in Gaza as civilian casualties continue to stack.

Following his State of the Union address, a hot microphone caught the president detailing to lawmakers how he’d recently told Netanyahu that they needed to have a “come-to-Jesus meeting” regarding the war.

“I want to keep talking about the situation in Gaza as well,” Varadkar said Friday. “My view is that we need a ceasefire as soon as possible to get food and medicine in, to get the hostages out. We need to talk about how we can make that happen and move towards a two-state solution.”

Schumer’s comments drew criticism from pro-Israel Democratic and Republican lawmakers in addition to Israeli government officials.

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“That’s for Israelis. I don’t appreciate when others try to tinker in our politics,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told the Washington Examiner Thursday. “When Bibi Netanyahu came to Congress to try to influence our action on the Iran deal and did it in a way that was going to boost him politically, I did not participate in that, but I don’t think I should be offering opinions about what Israelis should do in their elections.”

Emily Jacobs contributed to this report.