President Biden displayed a monumentally misguided animus against Israel in his State of the Union address this past Thursday evening. (The White House has posted its transcript of the speech as given here.) In a column behind NRO’s paywall Philip Klein characterized the address as “the most anti-Israel presidential speech in history.” I’d have to compare and contrast it with the presidential speeches of Barack Obama to be sure, but Biden’s hostility was patent.
Following the speech Biden had the opportunity to fraternize with the guys. He seized the opportunity to yuk it up outside the control of his daycare handlers in the White House. This is how it went down.
BIDEN: "I told him, Bibi — don't repeat this — you and I are going to have a come to Jesus meeting."
HANDLER: Sir, you're on a hot mic pic.twitter.com/slevQZPDap
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2024
What if Biden is senile like a fox? The senility came in especially handy in his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. It gave Hur a rationale to recommend non-prosecution of Biden’s offenses in the mishandling of classified documents.
Miranda Devine comments on the video below: “Not ‘confused,’ slyly denying. If Republicans keep underestimating Biden they will lose again.” I anticipate that they’re going to lose again regardless, but point taken.
Q: “Why does Mr. Netanyahu need a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting?”
BIDEN (confused): “I didn’t say that in the speech.”
Q: “What about after?”
BIDEN: “You guys eavesdropping on things!” pic.twitter.com/804aXMmBmQ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2024
Earlier today, I posted the official GOP response to Joe Biden’s SOTU hate-fest, by Senator Katie Britt. Britt’s speech was an impressive performance in its own way; if I were a Democrat, I think she would scare me.
But for us data guys, Stephen Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline has the numbers:
A lot of tall tales and a few outright fabrications in the Biden speech last night – and far too many to enumerate here. But we will revisit three here.
“My administration cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion.”
This isn’t just a little bit false, it’s an extraordinary and audacious misstatement of fact. The baseline deficit over 10 years, as measured when Biden came into office versus the latest forecast, shows nearly $6 trillion added to the debt since Biden arrived on the scene.
So how does a $6 trillion addition of red ink possibly equate to a $1.7 trillion reduction in the deficit. Someone didn’t pass his basic math exam in high school.
“We will make the rich pay their fair share.”
The top 1% of American tax filers now pay an all-time record high 46% of taxes. This is according to Biden’s own IRS. Does he think the rich should pay ALL the taxes?
That is actually a good question. I think that for many Democrats, the answer may be Yes. But within reason, experience shows that lower rates mean higher collections, especially from high earners.
“I inherited an economy [from Trump] that was on the brink…”
Actually, the economy grew by – ready for this? 33% in the third quarter of 2020 and 4.1% in the 4th quarter of 2020. The economy was in a full-scale COVID recovery when Biden came into office.
Oh, and Inflation was 1.4%.
Gas prices were $2.39 per gallon.
If you think of it as a relay race, Trump handed the baton to Biden in first place, with a rapidly growing lead. But Biden tripped over his own feet–both literally and figuratively–and turned the strong position that he inherited (and not only economically) into a fiasco. That I why I don’t see how he can be re-elected, despite Trump’s manifest flaws.
If you don’t get the Unleash Prosperity Hotline, you should. You can sign up for its frequent and always informative emails here.
As Scott notes, while Biden delivered the “SOTU from Hell,” Turner Classic Movies ran Casablanca. Those who tuned in witnessed fearful symmetry on the current state of America, with Joe Biden starring in the role of Philippe Pétain.
Back in 1940, the French WWI veteran, already in his 80s, struck an armistice with the German National Socialist invaders, then in alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Nazis made Pétain head of their puppet government in Vichy, allowing him to govern parts of France under their supervision. Casablanca shows a mural of Pétain, with his famous slogan, “Je tiens mes promesses, meme celles des autres,” – “I keep my promises, even those of others.” That’s Joe Biden all over.
The Delaware Democrat is the puppet of a globalist-leftist-woke axis, and their every wish is Biden’s command. As he showed in his September 1, 2022 speech, like something staged by Leni Riefenstahl, Biden regards those who want the nation to be great as the enemy. In the openly partisan FBI, Biden deploys his own Gestapo.
In Casablanca, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) asks Louis Renault (Claude Rains) if he’s pro-Vichy or Free French. In similar style, Americans must decide if they support the constitutional republic they have known or its steady demolition by the Biden Junta. In Casablanca, Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) welcomes Rick back to the fight, and Laszlo is sure “our side will win.” In America, things aren’t so clear.
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” said Joe Biden in 2020. That includes mail ballots, election laws changed by judges instead of legislators, elimination of ID requirements, ballot harvesting, massive voting by illegals, and so forth. That extensive organization remains in place for access by the eight million settlers Biden has brought into the country, with no criminal background checks, health records or job skills. In 2014, vice president Biden said those who enter the country illegally are “already American citizens.” All they want is a chance to contribute so “let people vote.”
As David Horowitz (Radical Son) has often noted, Democrats are good at voter fraud and Republicans are poor at preventing it. If that doesn’t change, as Rick told Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), “you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
Whatever Doctor Feelgood is operating in the White House these days injected Joe Biden with whatever cocktail that enabled him to yell nonstop for over an hour last night. And that is a good thing.
Before the speech, my wife, with her usual knack for getting at the heart of things, said that we should be rooting for Biden to get through the speech. Because if he collapsed midway in, the Democrats would be able to replace him on the ticket. And in truth, the only question last night was not whether Biden would give a good speech, or whether he would convince anyone not already committed to voting against Donald Trump, but whether he would remain upright.
We conservatives should be glad that he did, as he now continues his march toward the nomination as one of the very few Democrats Donald Trump might actually beat. So thanks, Doc.
The comedian Richard Lewis, of blessed memory, is credited with the formulation “the x from hell.” Having watched President Biden’s State of the Union Address last night in order to comment on it this morning, I found it to be the SOTU from hell. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
The White House has posted the text of the speech “as prepared for delivery.” That isn’t exactly how he gave it. You have to see it to get the full flavor. I have posted the White House video at the bottom.
Herewith are my impressions of Biden’s delivery and my observations on the speech in the form of bullet points:
• The Democrats in the audience broke out in cheers of “Four more years.” You have got to be kidding. Let me begin with a prediction. Even if Biden wins reelection to another term this coming November, he will not be giving four more State of the Union addresses. No way no how.
• Esquire used to pose a rhetorical question as a caption on a photograph of Richard Nixon that it published in its annual Dubious Achievement Awards edition: Why is this man laughing? The question to be posed for this speech is Why is this man shouting? He is an angry old man.
• This was a terrible speech terribly delivered. It’s a good thing no drug test was required before the address. Biden sounded hopped up. He spoke too fast. He slurred his words. He was frequently difficult to understand. He shouted a variety of clichés and shibboleths as though we might otherwise miss their depth and meaning. The disparity between the shibboleths and the shouting was almost funny.
• Biden sounded like a 45 rpm record playing at 78. It was an old record — it had scratches at several places that caused it to skip the groove.
• To whom was this speech addressed? The opening reflected the poor judgment of Biden’s daycare minders in the White House. As I heard it, the country needs to be protected from two threats: Russia and Donald Trump (“my predecessor”).
• This SOTU was a nakedly partisan campaign speech. I have to think that viewers lacking the persuasion of Democratic partisans were quickly turned off. In any event, the speech was a disgrace.
• And that’s not all. The speech was also disjointed and telegraphic. It covered everything from potato chips to computer chips. If it conformed to the laundry list mode of bad State of the Union addresses, this was a laundry list in Morse Code. You had to know the lingo of the proposed laws on Biden’s list. I had no idea what he was talking about when he got to his list.
• TCM counterprogrammed last night’s SOTU in part with Casablanca. You may recall that Humphrey Bogart responds to a comment with one of the movie’s many great lines: “I was misinformed.” Despite its thematic incoherence, anyone who took Biden’s speech at face value last night was misinformed. The misinformation gave it the thematic unity it otherwise lacked. A serious student of politics and the economy could write a dissertation exposing the misinformation conveyed in the speech.
• In his Russia/Ukraine remarks at the top of his speech Biden vowed, “We will not walk away.” Trisha Yearwood, call your office. Walk away, Joe — please. (I’m referring to Biden himself, not Ukraine.)
• The justices of the Supreme Court who chose to attend must have been thrilled to find themselves the villain of Biden’s condemnation of the Dobbs decision. The Supreme Court has returned the legality of abortion to the states. Biden both condemned the decision and celebrated its electoral impact. Abortion is not only a positive good on its own terms, it’s good for Democrats on the hustings. Wrapping it in the mantle of IVF, as he did last night, seemed to me a cruel joke.
• Biden wants to raise taxes on those not paying paying their “fair share.” Who isn’t paying his “fair share”? Billionaires aren’t. Corporations aren’t. That’s the bad news. We must be paying our “fair share.” That’s the good news, assuming we can draw that inference. Maybe someone can ask Karine Jean-Pierre about it at the next White House press conference.
• Biden wants more price controls on pharmaceutical products. When the AMA opposed the dangers of socialized medicine in days of yore, they were on to something.
• “Trickle down economics” came in for a beating. Does anyone who didn’t live through the Age of Reagan know what he was talking about? It was what Democrats condemned as “trickle down economics” that gave us the seven fat years of the Reagan boom. It was “trickle down economics’ that gave us the Trump boom — the boom for which so many voters are nostalgic today.
• Biden actually decried “shrinkflation” in the potato chips portion of his remarks. Some translation is required. “Shrinkflation” = inflation = Bidenomics.
• Biden implied that corporate shenanigans account for “shrinkflation.” Does anyone not understand why “shrinkflation” has broken out under the Biden administration?
• Biden decried “junk fees” and proclaimed his good works in saving us from them. This is “junk politics.”
• Biden reiterated his claims to have “cut the deficit.” He failed to mention that the decline occurred because pandemic spending from President Donald Trump’s tenure expired as scheduled. Biden didn’t do a damn thing. As CNN puts it, “Biden’s own actions, including laws he has signed and executive orders he has issued, have had the overall effect of worsening annual deficits, not reducing them.”
• By the way, in fiscal year 2023 total government spending amounted to $6.13 trillion and total revenue to $4.44 trillion. The resulting deficit amounts to $1.70 trillion, an increase of $320 billion from the previous fiscal year.
• Biden promoted many more federal spending programs I had never heard of. He apparently means to “cut the deficit” even faster and deeper.
• Biden bragged about his continuing student loan giveaways in the face of the Supreme Court ruling that found him to have exceeded his authority (in Biden v. Nebraska). One would like to see the thought bubbles over the heads of the Supreme Court justices.
• Biden talked about illegal immigration. He campaigned in support of it last time around. He invited it during the 2020 campaign. He facilitated it from his first day in office. Yet it’s not his fault. When it comes to the flood of illegal immigrants and related burdens, his theme song is Bob Dylan’s “It ain’t me, babe.”
• Biden saved his remarks on Israel and Hamas for the end of his speech. He won’t walk away from Ukraine, but he will walk away from Israel. He announced his Gaza rescue plan as advertised. It’s his plan to rescue himself in Michigan and rescue himself from his party’s pro-Hamas wing.
• Biden acknowledged: “Israel has a right to go after Hamas.” Thanks, big guy.
• Biden also toed the Hamas line in implicitly attributing responsibility to Israel and omitting the relevant facts: “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned.” See Abraham Wyner’s Tablet column “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers.”
• Biden peddled “the two-state solution.” What’s wrong with this picture? As Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer puts it: “Anybody talking about Palestinian state right now is living on another planet.”
• I enjoyed and appreciated Speaker Mike Johnson’s slight shakes of his head to express his disagreement with Biden’s misinformation. He did it just right.
• Although I could say more, these observations are already too long. I will conclude here. The competition is stiff, but this must have been the worst SOTU of all time.
Joe Biden is delivering his State of the Union speech tonight. Apparently he will chide Americans for not appreciating his wonderful economy; declining real wages will not be mentioned. He will denounce “shrinkflation,” as though people are too stupid to know inflation when they see it. Nor will Biden mention the eight million or so illegals who have streamed across the border, wreaking havoc, since he opened it.
Biden has always been mean-spirited. He is a nasty person, and always has been. Take, for example, his recent interview in the New Yorker. The interview is replete with Biden’s trademark classlessness, but take just one example: his smearing of Justice Thomas:
In a concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the legal rationale for overturning Roe could be applied to “correct the error” in cases on same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and access to contraception. I asked Biden if he thought that the Justices would undo those protections. “I don’t think there’s a majority to go there,” he said, but added, “I think that a couple on the Court would go considerably further”—specifically “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”
“Thomas?” I asked.
Biden grinned.
Those familiar with Thomas’s history will appreciate the absurdity of describing him as a yachtsman. He is better known for driving around America in an RV. But in any event, it is Biden–not Thomas–who has enriched himself and his family to the tune of many millions of dollars through influence peddling. Worst of all, he peddled his influence to powers hostile to America. It takes a lot of nerve for Joe Biden to sneer at the Court’s foremost intellectual for accepting a ride on a boat.
But that is Joe Biden: mean-spirited, through and through.
Tonight is the State of the Union speech. I know it’s hard to contain your excitement. Many Bingo and drinking games suggest themselves.
We all know that Joe Biden is a pretend president, so just who in the White House thought it was a good idea to have him have a Zoom call with actual pretend presidents—Hollywood actors who have played the president, soliciting their advice on how to approach his speech tonight. And what we get it this:
You may’ve heard I’ve got a big speech coming up.
So, I thought I would hear from some folks who have done the job before – sort of. pic.twitter.com/7wFYVQm7Xm
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 7, 2024
Maybe Biden’s staff came up with this exercise just to distract him from doing anything today. Or to make him feel good about himself. If all these Hollywood pretenders say he’s doing a great job, it must be true.
Missing from this roster: Dave. Kevin Kline, that is. Maybe they didn’t want the subtle reminder of an imposter in the Oval Office. Too close to the current truth.
Digging deep into the Super Tuesday primary results, I foresee President Biden facing off for a rematch against President Trump. Can you feel the excitement? The two candidates represent juggernauts within their respective parties.
Let’s take the Democrats first, courtesy of RealClearPolitics. What we have here is one full boatload of results. They raise the question: who is Marianne Williamson and what is she doing here? She is the best-selling author of a variety of books including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course In Miracles, A Woman’s Worth, Illuminata, The Healing of America, and Illuminated Prayers. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Williamson continues to inspire audiences on a global scale as she lectures internationally in the fields of spirituality and new thought.
I infer from the results that Democrats resist the light. They resist new thought. Also, we don’t have a prayer. We need a miracle.
Biden’s presents himself as a throwback to the old-fashioned Democratic Party, yet he has adopted the policies of party’s far left. Most prominent among these policies is the opening of our borders and the implicit rejection of the sovereignty of the United States. Over the past three-plus years these policies have wrought great damage. Biden wants to test the outer limits of Adam Smith’s proposition that “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” One can’t help but wonder if we can put ourselves back on track.
It’s not Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. It’s the woke left’s Democratic Party. It’s the party of those who say the things which are not.
Biden made an appearance during the narrow window of his waking hours yesterday. He appeared to have dropped in from outer space. He sounded like he had not been briefed since he blasted off from his homeworld. J.B., phone home.
FULL VIDEO:
REPORTER: "What's your message to Democrats who are concerned about your poll numbers?"
BIDEN: "My poll numbers? The last five polls you guys don't report. I'm winning — five! Five in a row!" pic.twitter.com/Mz5gWQMRSA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 5, 2024
On the Republican side of Super Tuesday (also courtesy of RCP), President Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination. Nikki Haley will suspend her campaign later this morning.
This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. If President Trump were to keel over and leave us with an open convention in Milwaukee next July, I assess the odds that the delegates would turn to Haley at zero. It would be a politician in the mold of Trump — probably Ron DeSantis, or perhaps J.D. Vance or Vivek the Mistake. Trump has transformed the Republican Party. By contrast with Biden and the Democrats, he has stamped the party in his image.
I am surprised by the not insubstantial fraction of votes that Haley pulled yesterday. Some portion of the Haley represents Democrats voting in open primaries. Haley won Vermont, but even if she were the nominee she would lose it in November. Vermont is a socialist state. I’m not talking about Vermont. Assuming Trump can survive the Democrats’ lawfare, he cannot win without a united Republican Party. He has some work to do to put the Republican house together. His choice for vice president could help.
It is difficult to project the state of play in the coming months. My crystal ball is cloudy. Much depends on the course of the Democrats’ lawfare against Trump and, to a lesser extent, the nature of the campaign Trump runs. I think he best serves his own interests at this point when he is out of the news and provides the alternative to Biden. If the election can be reduced to a binary choice, Biden should lose. The Democrats’ lawfare means to preclude that.
Yesterday brought more news of the illegal immigration that Biden has invited, inflicted, facilitated, fostered. Biden’s derelictions in office are historic in nature. The Daily Mail reports, for example, “Biden administration ADMITS flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security ‘vulnerabilities.'” The New York Post reports “Elon Musk says Biden flying 320K ‘unvetted’ migrants into the US sets stage ‘for something far worse than 9/11.’” Elon Musk — he’s no dummy.
The true numbers involved in the invasion that Biden invited are staggering, whatever they are, as are the secondary effects. As I say, we need a miracle, or something like it.
Today’s third NY Times installment about their most recent poll piles on the bad news for Biden: not only are you losing to Trump head-to-head, and are unpopular, but today we learn that more voters like Trump’s policies and record better than Biden’s.
Here’s the graphic depiction:
Some excerpts from the Times:
And despite holding intensely and similarly critical opinions both of President Biden and of his predecessor, Americans have much more positive views of Donald J. Trump’s policies than they do of Mr. Biden’s, according to New York Times/Siena College polls.
Overall, 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared with just 18 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s policies. . .
Women are 20 percentage points more likely to say that Mr. Trump’s policies have helped them than Mr. Biden’s have, despite the fact that Mr. Trump installed Supreme Court justices who ultimately overturned the right to an abortion and that about two-thirds of women in America think that abortion should be legal in all or most instances.
In a separate Times story, the Biden message to doubting Democrats is—drop dead. Well that’s the headline the NY Daily News would have used. Instead the Times headline is:
“For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It.”
. . . The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. . . Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern.
Just a guess, but I think the word has gone out from the Obama redoubt in Martha’s Vineyard and/or his shadow White House in Kalorama that the New York Times needs to lead the push this week to force Biden out of the race. The Times is doom-scrolling its latest poll showing Biden on his way to certain defeat to Trump. Yesterday’s installment gave the raw numbers—Biden is eroding across the board.
Today the Times is out with another headline of doom, whose contents could have been part of yesterday’s story, except the Times wants to mile their poll for maximum effect. Biden’s own voters think he is too old:
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president. . . Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective, and 45 percent expressed a belief that he could not do the job. . .
This unease, which has long surfaced in polls and in quiet conversations with Democratic officials, appears to be growing as Mr. Biden moves toward formally capturing his party’s nomination.
I’m guessing those “quiet conversations” will start to be less quiet fairly soon. Gavin Newsom has his phone programmed on speed dial.
Here’s one of the graphics:
In case Democratic elites aren’t getting the message, the Times director of polling Nate Cohn offers his own separate “analysis” of the matter:
The Big Change Between the 2020 and 2024 Races: Biden Is Unpopular
Why is President Biden losing? There are many possible reasons, including his age, the war in Gaza, the border and lingering concerns over inflation. But ultimately, they add up to something very simple: Mr. Biden is very unpopular. He’s so unpopular that he’s now even less popular than Mr. Trump, who remains every bit as unpopular as he was four years ago.
President Biden’s unpopularity has flipped the expected dynamic of this election. It has turned what looked like a seemingly predictable rematch into a race with no resemblance to the 2020 election, when Mr. Biden was a broadly appealing candidate who was acceptable to the ideologically diverse group of voters who disapproved of Mr. Trump. . .
That’s gotta hurt. Then there’s this:
We didn’t ask whether Mr. Biden should drop out of the race. We considered it — in fact, we discussed it for days — but many respondents may not know the complications involved in a contested convention.
Subtext: “Doctor” Jill: Get your husband to do the right thing for the interest of the Party. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment.
P.S. It was the suddenly plummeting polls that prompted LBJ to drop out of the 1968 race at the end of March.
As is now more widely reported, President Biden relies on cue cards for just about everything, but it looks like even this extreme measure is failing. Here in reading from a prepared statement on a notecard about getting food to Gaza, at the 30-second mark Biden twice says we’ll be opening up more corridors to “Ukraine.” Italian PM Meloni looks around the room wondering if someone is going to help this poor doddering old man.
Biden: “We are concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza We will join Jordan and our other partners to airdrop food on Ukraine ”
Look at Italian PM trying hard not to laugh
pic.twitter.com/FJFFusvYWM— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 2, 2024
The New York Times is out with its latest poll today, and they can’t sugar coat the bad news for Biden (and good news for Trump) that it contains. The headline says it all:
The poll has Trump with a five-point lead.
Some internals from the article are even more devastating than these headline numbers:
The poll offers an array of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including among women, Black and Latino voters. So far, it is Mr. Trump who has better unified his party, even amid an ongoing primary contest. . .
Mr. Trump is winning 97 percent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Mr. Biden. In contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his 2020 voters, with 10 percent saying they now back Mr. Trump. . .
One of the more ominous findings for Mr. Biden in the new poll is that the historical edge Democrats have held with working-class voters of color who did not attend college continues to erode.
Mr. Biden won 72 percent of those voters in 2020, according to exit polling, providing him with a nearly 50-point edge over Mr. Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll showed Mr. Biden only narrowly leading among nonwhite voters who did not graduate from college: 47 percent to 41 percent. . .
Mr. Trump’s policies were generally viewed far more favorably by voters than Mr. Biden’s. A full 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared to only 18 percent who said the same of Mr. Biden’s.
The gender gap, for instance, is no longer benefiting Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Mr. Biden four years ago, are now equally split, while men gave Mr. Trump a nine-point edge. The poll showed Mr. Trump edging out Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the Black vote is shrinking, too.
Memo to Trump: Don’t blow it.
President Biden announced today that the United States will airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza in the coming days. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have been following the line traced by the Biden administration, but this may strike some as a bridge too far. The mission will purportedly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, but all sentient observers understand that the it will necessarily make the “assistance” available to Hamas.
Politico reports Biden’s remarks here. The White House has not yet posted a transcript. To add insult to injury, even though he was reading off note cards, Biden confused “Ukraine” with “Gaza.” The guy’s brain is fried in more ways than one.
Biden announces the U.S. is “providing air drops of additional food and supplies” into Ukraine pic.twitter.com/ZZt7LV1EMg
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 1, 2024
STEVE adds: Curious thing, though. A spokesman for Oxfam America has issued a Twitter statement opposing the relief air drop, because the narrative needs to be preserved. At least that’s how I read this:
James Biden has now admitted that he paid his brother Joe $40,000 out of funds he received from CEFC China Energy, which is generally regarded as a front for the Chinese government.
“Where did you believe the source of the money that was going into [Hunter Biden’s company] Owasco, prior to being sent to you, was coming from?” an investigator asked James during the Feb. 21 interview.
“CEFC,” James conceded — following an extended back-and-forth in which the first brother’s attorney Paul Fishman tried to argue that “money’s fungible” before being reminded by a House staffer that James “did not have sufficient funds” to make the $40,000 alleged loan repayment on his own, “so it is traceable.”
Of course, the goalposts in the Joe Biden bribery scandal have repeatedly been moved:
Democrats have defended the alleged loan repayments as evidence of nothing more than Joe Biden being a supportive brother. But Republicans say it makes clear that the president benefited from his relatives’ dealings as he repeatedly interacted with their business associates, including in the CEFC venture.
I think Republicans have made a mistake in seeming to go along with the Democrats’ theme that money has to be traced to Joe’s bank accounts in order to count. Under federal bribery law, Biden is guilty if he “demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value” not just for himself, but for “any other person or entity” in return for “being influenced in the performance of any official act.” People who bribe politicians are rarely dumb enough to make checks payable to the politicians themselves. Most often, they go to family members.
Republicans also shouldn’t fall for the Democrats’ spin about Joe not being involved in “his son’s overseas business dealings.” So, what business was Hunter in? Did he own or run a company that produced any products or provided any services? No. Hunter’s only business was peddling Joe’s influence. And for that to work, it had to be plausible that Joe was in on the deal, and would use his influence to benefit CEFC, or whoever. This is why Hunter would bring his father in on the telephone when he was meeting with Joe’s customers.
Notwithstanding the ever-moving goalposts, I think this is an instance where the Democrats’ control over the news media actually works to their disadvantage. They have been lulled into thinking that they can get away with their candidate’s having turned his power as vice president into tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains for his family and himself, because the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the usual gang of suspects try to run interference.
But in their blundering way, Republicans have managed to convey to a large majority of voters that Joe Biden is a corrupt pol. It is one of several reasons why, in spite of Donald Trump’s grave defects as a candidate, I don’t think Joe Biden can be re-elected.
AEI’s Danielle Pletka is not a fan of President Trump, so I take her pulling on the fire alarm about President Biden at face value:
What we hear from members of congress is … terrible. Democrats too. Those who talk the president tell of a man who can’t go beyond the words on the page in front of him. He can’t converse on matters of substance. He can deliver talking points, but can’t negotiate with any seriousness. That’s one of the reasons — though far from the only one — why Congress can’t move forward on an emergency supplemental. Republicans are in complete turmoil, but talks with the White House are not helping.
Then there are the foreign leaders. Among themselves — and an open secret in DC’s embassies — they talk about a president who is confused, unsure of the subject matter under discussion, distant, disconnected, and all too often incomprehensible.
This is the man with the nuclear football. The man who commands our armed forces. It doesn’t matter whether you like the Democrats or hate them. The office is critically important, and it is almost vacant.
See Pletka’s What the Hell Is Going On? post “What we hear about Biden’s decline.”
The Michigan primary was held yesterday. President Biden defeated Uncommitted, Marianne Willison, and my cousin Dean Phillips on the Democrat side. Dean commented on Twitter for the benefit of his former friends in the party: “If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!”
President Trump handily defeated Nikki Haley on the Republican side. Here are the current results posted by RealClearPolitics. Note the differential in turnout.
One can infer that Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s presidential nominees, but the results seem slightly more surprising than expected. Axios managing editor/politics David Lindsey offers a brief take on the results that I found helpful:
There wasn’t much doubt that President Biden and former President Trump would romp to victories in the Michigan primaries Tuesday. But Biden’s win in particular revealed his vulnerability in a crucial swing state that could decide the presidency in November….Arab American and young voters — key to Biden winning Michigan in 2020 — turned out by the tens of thousands on Tuesday to vote … not for Biden, but for “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
• The protest vote, driven by anger over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, had drawn more than 77,000 supporters with 70% of the ballots counted — several times more than organizers expected.
• That took some of the glow from a victory in which Biden got more than 80% of the vote, and confirmed that Biden has some serious persuading to do between now and November.
• “We need more than just nice words and hope. We need a permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, told CNN. The group was behind the “uncommitted” vote effort.
Other takeaways from Michigan:
1, Biden has other problems, too.
• Another jolt for the president’s campaign Tuesday: A jarring enthusiasm gap between the Democratic and Republican primaries.
• Nearly 40% more people voted in the Republican primary than in the Democratic contest — despite the protest campaign that aided turnout on the Democratic side.
• Trump, who once again defeated former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, got more votes on the GOP side than the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary between Biden, “uncommitted” and two other candidates.
2. It wasn’t all good news for Trump.
• That surge in GOP voters was driven in part by about 27% of Republicans voting for Haley, whose support continues to be not nearly enough to win the Republican nomination — but enough to show that a sizable chunk of the GOP may never be on board with Trump.
• Haley’s campaign might not last beyond Super Tuesday next week, when Trump is expected to score hundreds of delegates and put a virtual lock on the GOP nomination as 16 states hold contests.
• But Haley’s level of support suggests that many of her backers may stay home in November — or even vote for Biden, if Trump is on the ballot.
Whole thing here.
We seek to read the tea leaves in the results. As some sage has famously observed, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch puts it this way: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” To read the tea leaves we have to project ahead to next November. How will the candidates look at that time? Our crystal ball is cloudy. Both Biden and Trump are hobbled by weaknesses that will be magnified over the next eight months.
For Democrats this is the Weekend At Bernie’s election. It has become increasingly difficult to keep Biden upright during business hours. His brain is fried. His managers have to keep him under wraps. He is an embarrassment. Playing to his party’s activist base, he has left undone what should have been done and he has done that which should not have been done.
For Republicans this is the “In the Jailhouse Now” election. The electoral impact of the Democrat lawfare on Trump are particularly difficult to predict, but they can’t be good for him. They impose their own limitations on Trump in terms of time, money, and who knows what else. That’s what it’s all about. Anyone can see storm clouds ahead.
I absolutely hate the clichéd last resort of scoundrel pundits as the election approaches. You know, “it depends on turnout.” With respect to what should be the insuperable problems each candidate confronts, let’s just say “it depends on how it turns out.” They can’t both lose. One of them is going to prevail.
President Biden spoke at the Governors Ball Dinner in the State Dining Room at the White House on Saturday evening (video excerpt below). The White House has posted the transcript of his brief remarks here.
After the introductory blather, Biden referred to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln behind him — you can see it here — as he attempted to follow his text. This is how the White House transcript of the fourth paragraph reads:
And, you know, standing here in front of this portrait of the man behind me here, he — he said — and I want to make sure I get the quote exactly right. He said, “We — the better angels” — he said, “We must address the counsel — and adjust the better angels of our nature.” And we do the — and we do well to remember what else he said. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends.” This is in the middle of — this is in the — in the part of the Civil War. He said, “We’re not enemies, but [we’re] friends. We must not be enemies.”
“The [unnamed] man behind [him}” was Lincoln. Remember him? The attempted quotation comes from the famous passage that concludes Lincoln’s first inaugural address:
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The Daily Mail reports on Biden’s senescent ramble in “Biden completely butchering lines from Lincoln’s inaugural address – and then gets laughs when he jokes about his age after telling audience: ‘I wanna get this quote exactly right.'” However, I’m not sure that this was the worst of Biden’s brief remarks. He also took an incoherent stab at his phony remembrance of things past:
And, you know, it seems to me that — I’ll conclude by saying, I — I’ve spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping — someone whom I have a great deal of difference with. And I was — when I was vice president, President — my — my president was — told me that he wanted me to get to know Xi Jinping because it was clear he was going to be the head of Russia — of — of China and that he — we had a — we were having problems with Russia at the time and other countries as well. And so, what he said was, “Get to know him. He’s going to be there.” I — and he couldn’t because he was the president, and he couldn’t travel. So, I traveled 17,000 miles with him throughout the country — our country and — and in — in China, as well.
We were in the Tibetan Plateau. And he turned to me, and he said, “Can you define America for me?” And I — given this has been documented, and it’s real — I looked at him, and I said, “Yes, I can. In one word.” And he looked at me. And he said, “What’s that?” And I said, “Possibilities.” Possibilities.
You say president, you say vice president. You say Russia, you say China. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Biden has reached the stage of life described by Mark Twain. His faculties have decayed to such an extent that he cannot remember any but the things that never happened. This 17,000-mile shtick has been debunked many times. Glenn Kessler devoted one of his Washington Post Fact Checker columns — this one — to it in February 2021. He awarded it 3 Pinocchios.
However, it’s the substance of the story that is most absurd. Biden says it has been “documented.” That means he has told the story many, many times. According to Matt Viser’s 2022 Washington Post story, aides who were with Biden say that they do not recall that exchange. It has been “documented” by his repetition of it.
We can go this far with the story. When Xi observes an Obama or a Biden, he wonders how he can exploit the “possibilities.”
The White House transcript specifies the time of Biden’s remarks at 7:40 P.M. EST. He wound up at 7:44. It was past the guy’s bedtime. Fortunately, the State Dining Room is located in the Executive Residence of the White House. He only had a few pitty-pat steps to go before his head hit the pillow for the evening.
Biden completely malfunctions as he tries — and fails miserably — to read a quote from "the man behind me here" pic.twitter.com/anLx6NEAPx
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 25, 2024
Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia. Thursday morning, she went for a run and didn’t return. Her body was found on the campus of the University of Georgia. Riley was murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela:
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, who was arrested Friday in connection to the murder of the 22-year-old Augusta University student, crossed into El Paso, Texas, from Venezuela in September 2022, NewsNation reported Saturday, citing Department of Homeland Security sources.
He had been released due to a lack of detention space, the sources added.
Laken Riley
Ibarra is one of millions of illegals whom Joe Biden has deliberately welcomed into the United States, in violation of federal law, the Constitution, and Biden’s oath of office. Biden’s motives are hard to understand. But in the law, one is held to have intended the natural and inevitable consequences of one’s actions. Occam’s Razor, like the common law, implies that Biden is trying to bring chaos and destruction to the United States.
Having entered America with no problem, Ibarra set out for New York. I don’t believe it has been reported how he got there, but he spent a year or so in New York City before relocating to Georgia. His social media accounts suggest that he was living it up:
In September 2022, however, the Venezuelan native looked carefree, smiling in Times Square and Rockefeller Center in New York City, posts on a Facebook account linked to his name showed.
Of course, he got into trouble in New York, too:
Police sources in New York confirmed to NewsNation that a suspect matching Ibarra’s name and age was arrested in the Big Apple for endangering a 5-year-old child last year.
But illegals who commit crimes are rarely punished. Ibarra eventually joined his older brother Diego, who I assume is also an illegal although I haven’t seen this reported, in Athens. The older brother is a criminal, too; he was arrested three times between September and December 2023. Ho hum. Liberals refuse to enforce our laws, until a known criminal commits a crime so heinous that it attracts national attention. Like this one.
So, because Joe Biden opened our southern border, Jose Ibarra waltzed in from Venezuela, spent a year or so hanging out in New York, where any crimes he committed went unpunished, then joined his brother in Georgia. Where, day before yesterday, he saw Laken Riley jogging on the University of Georgia campus and decided it would be fun to kill her. Congratulations, Joe. This one’s on you.
A postscript: the U.S. isn’t the only country dumb enough to admit large numbers of illegal aliens, often referred to in the press as “asylum seekers.” Western Europe has problems even worse than ours, as exemplified by this case:
Police in Vienna launched a criminal investigation after three women were found dead in a brothel, authorities said Saturday.
A witness discovered traces of blood outside the building, located near the Danube River, and alerted police on Friday evening. The bodies of the three victims had “cuts and stab wounds,” police spokesperson Philipp Hasslinger told The Associated Press.
A 27-year-old man was soon arrested in the vicinity of the brothel while carrying a knife, the supposed weapon. Police said the suspect is an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan and will be questioned by police later on Saturday.
The Vienna brothel was legal, but apparently the “asylum seeker” disapproved of it. Hey, some of us may disapprove of it, too. But we wouldn’t murder the women who work there. Open-borders immigration policies have been a disaster wherever they have been implemented.
UPDATE: It turns out that Jose Ibarra had a “wife.” Sort of:
“We got married so we could join our asylum cases,” she told The Post. “He was the person I thought I could see through. We’ve known each other our entire lives.”
So, just another species of immigration fraud. Honestly, though, Ibarra and his “wife” needn’t have bothered. Joe Biden’s welcome mat is out, and everyone is here to stay–especially those who will degrade our country.
Yesterday in San Francisco President Biden held what the White House termed a press gaggle. In the event it seemed more of a gag than a gaggle. This is the White House transcript of his remarks:
Hello, folks. This morning, I had the honor of meeting with Aleksey Navalny’s wife and daughter.
As to state the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage. And it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are — are emulating that. And we’re going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.
And — but the one thing I’ve made — that was made clear to me is that
Yulanda[Yulia] is going to — she’s going to continue to fight (inaudible) the way. So, we’re not letting up.
You say Yulanda, I say Yolanda. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Today, Biden said he "had the honor of meeting with" Alexei Navalny's widow, who he called "Yolanda."
Her name is Yulia. pic.twitter.com/ecBgLtZdn0
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 23, 2024
Like John, it would be hilarious to observe the left’s sudden obsession with “Christian nationalism” if it weren’t based on an abysmal ignorance that is itself a grim threat to the continuation of our republic. I guess Thomas Jefferson was a Christian nationalist for the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, although in fairness to stupid leftists, they don’t believe in “self-evident truth” either, because they are unable to grasp the meaning of “self-evident” as Thomas Aquinas, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln learned from Euclid. (One of my core lessons in the classroom is the continuity of thought between the “Two Tommys”—Tommy Aquinas and Tommy Jefferson. Hardly anyone ever notices this.)
Or how about John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But you know who else turns out to be a “Christian nationalist”?
Joe Biden, Christian Nationalist:
"My rights are not derived from any government…they're given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our Creator."
— Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) February 23, 2024
Gosh—I wonder whatever became of that guy?