Biden’s year of blunders: Joe’s been cordoned off from the media to an unprecedented degree this year because no one (including the White House) knows what gaffe he’ll blurt out next, says MEGHAN MCCAIN
Reports cards are in, Joe.
You get a big fat ‘F’ for communication skills.
As the year ends, President Biden has only given 7 formal interviews with professional journalists, down from 15 last year.
He’s held five solo press conferences in 2022 down from six in 2021. Trump delivered 18 and 19 respectively, over the same period.
It’s unprecedented to have a modern president so cordoned off from the media, but that’s only part of the problem. The real trouble starts when Joe actually begins speaking.
On Tuesday, video emerged of Biden chit-chatting with an Iranian activist at a November 6th campaign rally for a California Democrat.
‘President Biden can you please announce that JCPOA [2015 Iran nuclear deal] is dead? Can you just announce that?’
‘No,’ he said,
‘No, why not?’ she asked.
‘A lot of reasons. It is dead, but we’re not gonna announce it,’ Biden replied.
Ummm… Mr. President, you just did ‘announce’ it.
The Iran nuclear deal was one of the most controversial and consequential foreign policy agreements deals in recent memory. Remember the pallets of cash delivered directly to the mullahs during the Obama administration?
A president sticking a fork in it certainly has domestic and geopolitical ramifications. So why not make this announcement official? Don’t say nothing, don’t start nothing as the old adage goes.
On Tuesday, video emerged of Biden chit-chatting with an Iranian activist at a November 6th campaign rally for a California Democrat.
As usual, the White House trotted out someone to undermine Biden’s claim.
‘There is no progress happening with respect to the Iran deal now,’ said White House national security spokesman John Kirby, diplomatically avoiding the word ‘dead.’
Moments like this are all too common now and it’s the reason the White House hardly allows the president to talk to anyone.
Well, almost anyone.
In a new interview with actress Drew Barrymore, Biden waded dangerously close to his previously debunked ‘Nelson Mandela’ story.
He once claimed (and hasn’t retracted) that he was arrested by South African police 30 years ago when trying to visit Mandela in prison and that Mandela thanked him for it.
‘It is a long story,’ Biden conceded to Barrymore.
Yes, it is.
The Washington Post gave that old yarn ‘Four Pinocchio’s’ and found, ‘there is no evidence for either claim; neither appears credible.’
So, is it a big surprise that Biden doesn’t get out much? No.
The Easter Bunny running interference between Biden and the media at the White House Easter Egg Roll has got to go down as one of the most absurd scenes in presidential history. But we all realize why this is happening. You never know what’s going to come out of his mouth.
Here’s just a few of the lowlights.
In February, Biden suggested that a Russian ‘minor incursion’ into Ukraine may not provoke a response from the West.
‘Are you effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country?’ a gobsmacked reported asked.
The president laughed and said, ‘Good question. That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?’
In September, Biden declared, ‘the pandemic is over’ on 60 Minutes. Obviously, Anthony Fauci disagrees.
Biden was on the roll that month.
‘Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here,’ he said to packed room at a White House Conference.
Rep. Jackie Walorski was killed in a car accident in August.
In October, he warned that the world was on the precipice of nuclear ‘Armageddon.’
The White House said there’s no new intelligence to cause alarm.
In November, Biden claimed his late son Beau died while serving in Iraq.
Beau, tragically died from brain cancer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.
And just last week, the president claimed that as vice president he awarded his own uncle, Frank H. Biden, a Purple Heart for his heroism in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
That story is not only false, but also impossible unless Biden is in possession of a time machine. Frank H. Biden died in 1999, almost a decade before Biden became VP.
Why is he saying these obviously false, misleading, and outright dangerous things? Who knows? And good luck getting any straight answers from his press secretary.
‘Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here,’ he said to packed room at a White House Conference. Rep. Jackie Walorski (above) was killed in a car accident in August.
When Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich asked Karine Jean Pierre about a court decision related to the border crisis, the spokeswoman played dumb. She acted as if the White House was being compelled to lift a Trump-era policy holding back a new flood of illegal immigrants – when actually the Biden White House has pursued that outcome all along.
One of the things so many Americans, myself included, were looking forward to in the Biden administration, after the confusing and often chaotic messaging of the Trump years, was plain talk. But all we get is one tall tale after another. An unlike the last administration, the Biden bunker mentality puts him out of reach.
And that’s not even the sad part – the sad part is that Biden is getting away with it.
I would like to say the mainstream media is going to be more critical in 2023, but I doubt it. They’re looking ahead to 2024 and so far, Biden is the Democratic party standard bearer, so he’ll keep getting a pass. He’ll be 86 years old at the end of his second term if re-elected, another uncomfortable truth many journalists try to avoid.
On Biden’s first day in office, White House press secretary Jen Psaki pledged his administration would ‘bring transparency and truth back to the government.’
Well, with 2 years of his term in the rearview mirror, we can safely say that hasn’t happened. Sadly, the promise of transparency has proven to be a lie. And the resulting shroud of confusion and spin from this White House is dizzying.
In the end, we should have expected this from a presidential candidate who campaigned from his basement. Now he’s governing from the basement.
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