I was going to write about the sheer cowardice shown by President Joe Biden in his astonishing, repeated avoidance of press questions except under the most tightly controlled conditions.
I couldn’t get inspired to finish it. Why? Because compared to everything else Biden is doing wrong, his hiding from the press seems the least of our worries. This presidency already is so awful as to be frightening.
Observers from friendly foreign nations are now openly accusing Biden of “serious mental decline,” and they may be right. When Biden does act deliberately and decisively, though, he makes matters far worse, often in direct opposition to real U.S. interests. Even those of us who warned that Biden was no centrist, but rather from the very liberal Ted Kennedy branch of the Democratic Party, took comfort in the idea that he would serve as a check on the full-fledged radical Left. But now, he is governing as a radical lefty.
The old Biden insisted that illegal immigration should be forcefully opposed, even by use of a wall, and that “no great country can say it is secure without being able to control its borders.” Now, through multiple statements and policy choices, he has deliberately encouraged the most massive flood of illegal immigrants in our history, all while falsely vilifying border agents who were just doing their jobs.
The Biden of just a few months ago insisted he would never allow scenes reminiscent of the U.S. Embassy’s helicopter escape from Vietnam in 1975. Instead, as we have seen, Biden ignored his own generals’ advice by insisting on a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan that was arguably far worse and potentially far more destabilizing for long-term U.S. interests.
The old Biden, the one who ran in the Democratic primaries in 2019-20, repeatedly insisted that major legislation should require serious efforts to bring Republicans to the table. Today’s Biden pushes the most far-reaching, expensive, and policy-radical budget bill in U.S. history by trying to force it through with only Democratic support via the barest majority arithmetically possible. To help “pay” for it, Biden pushes tax and fee hikes and Big Brother policies that would trample privacy, devastate family farms and small businesses, and seriously retard economic growth.
Biden is presiding over the worst major return of core inflation in 30 years, has on multiple occasions infuriated this nation’s longest-standing allies, refused to offer anything approaching adequate support for brave Cubans protesting communist oppression, and repeatedly has suppressed U.S. energy independence while supporting the fuel projects of our enemies.
There is not a single thing about this administration that can be described as even remotely “moderate” and not a single important front on which it has shown the most basic competence. And there isn’t the slightest sense that this president has the courage, regard for transparency, or sense of responsibility to face unscripted questions even from a media that has covered up for his numerous shortcomings of ethics and judgment.
Even the obsequiously pro-Biden media now is taking umbrage at the president’s political dodgeball. Hence, the “official complaint” from the White House press corps about Biden and his suspiciously protective handlers shutting down and shouting down basic questions at a traditional press availability after a meeting with the leader of a close U.S. ally.
There’s something very rotten in the state of this White House. There’s something very off-kilter about this president. After eight months, Biden’s term as president already is an epochal disaster. He should not put the country through 40 months more of it.
