The Patriot Post® · Biden's Bid for More Ukraine Money Falls Flat
Fresh off his trip to Israel, during which he mixed up the dates for the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, and during which he suggested that Israel’s mortal enemy, Hamas, needed to learn “how to shoot straight,” Joe Biden took to the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office and proceeded to be … irresolute.
This was just the second such address from this president, which strikes us as a scathing indictment not only of his cognitive abilities but also his persuasive powers. In a speech that lasted just under 15 minutes, Joe Biden tried to make the case to the American people and to our elected representatives that we need to send yet another massive sum of money to Ukraine, with a couple of lesser sums thrown in for Israel and for securing our own border.
But, as the Washington Examiner reports, “Biden’s use of his bully pulpit may not make much of a difference as the House remains without a speaker and cannot pass the president’s $100 billion supplemental funding request.”
To be fair to the president, he exceeded our expectations — at least from a delivery standpoint. We don’t know what pharmaceuticals are being administered to Joe Biden to make him appear more lucid and more energetic during these rare occasions, but it’s clearly working. He didn’t mumble, and he didn’t stumble too much, and he invoked former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s assessment of the United States as “the indispensable nation.” He also made a boilerplate claim that this moment was one “where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.”
But his speech largely fell flat because his handlers set an unrealistic expectation: that of commingling the increasingly unpopular Ukraine war with a new and far more visceral war between Israel and the murderous baby-killing cutthroats of Hamas. “Hamas and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin represent different threats,” Biden intoned, “but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” The president added: “American leadership is what holds the world together. … To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, is just not worth it.”
He also tried to make it sound like we’re only supporting Ukraine with weaponry. That’s a lie. As we noted recently, we’re also propping up Ukraine’s civil servants and its Department of Education.
He also weirdly attempted to cover himself in valor by humble-bragging about his trip to Ukraine last year and his trip to Israel earlier this week — something about his very brief presence in these two war zones apparently being worthy of our admiration.
Aside from the mistake of trying to conflate the two wars, Biden once again refused to take a strong stance against Iran. Indeed, he only mentioned the rogue regime twice during his speech. “Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine,” he said, “and it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups in the region. And we’ll continue to hold them accountable.”
“We’ll continue to hold them accountable”? Does bending over backwards to resurrect Barack Obama’s disastrous nuclear appeasement deal count as continuing? Does coughing up $6 billion in ransom for five American hostages count as continuing?
As former Trump CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted: “His remarks struck the right tone … but sitting behind the Resolute Desk, you have to be resolute. And he was none of that. … He has done nothing to hold the Iranian regime accountable — literally nothing. Indeed, he’s done just the reverse of that.”
Referring to Biden’s failure to enforce sanctions on Iran and restrict that regime’s ability to profit from oil revenues, he said: “Iran now has $70 billion. When he took office, they had $6 billion.” Pompeo also rightly noted that the Iranians today are holding more American hostages than they did when Joe Biden gave them $6 billion in ransom on 9/11.
As to the Iranian proxy of Hamas, they murdered at least 30 Americans, and they still hold an unknown number of other Americans hostage. Biden’s specific outrage about these two facts was, frankly, missing in action.
Biden’s massive aid package calls for $105 billion altogether, with $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. This shows us where his priorities are.
Biden also promised $100 million in aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza, about which Republican Senator Tom Cotton said, “Hamas is effectively the government of Gaza, and we’re not going to grant billions of dollars in aid that’s just going to be, in effect, resupply for terrorist groups.”
Indeed, Pompeo noted that this “humanitarian assistance” will be sent to the UN and ultimately snatched up by Hamas and used for its own awful purposes. What Joe Biden is doing, then, is arming both sides in a fight: He’s arming Israel, yes, but he’s also arming Hamas.
Cotton also posted this admonition: “There’ve been multiple attacks against Americans by Iran’s proxies in the last few days alone. Biden must immediately warn Iran that any attack by its proxies against Americans will be treated as a direct attack by Iran against the U.S. and will be met with massive retaliation.”
What Joe Biden has failed to maintain is deterrence. As Congressman Dan Crenshaw rightly noted on Fox News this morning:
If you want to prevent war, you have to be able to threaten it and threaten it credibly. And that takes statements that make people uncomfortable. President Trump did this all the time. He had an intuition for what deterrence actually was. President Biden whispering ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it’ into the microphone is not as effective. … Iran and Hezbollah are actively in the decision-making process about whether they will open up that multifront war [against Israel] … and that decision will be dependent on what they think will happen to them in return. If you want to prevent war, you have to make it very clear that you’re willing to beat the crap out of your enemies if they try something.“
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance wasn’t impressed by Biden’s speech either. As he noted last night: "Why is Joe Biden going on national television and selling people on a Ukrainian escalation, when Joe Biden is talking about the terrible tragedy in Israel? Whatever your views on Ukraine, it is a separate country and a separate problem. … I think what the president did is completely disgraceful. If he wants to sell the American people on $60 billion more to Ukraine, he shouldn’t use dead Israeli children to do it. It was disgusting.”
Perhaps the most disgraceful moment of a materially unimpressive speech, however, was when Biden cautioned Israel not to be “blinded by rage” in its efforts to eradicate Hamas. Israel, of course, will make its own decisions about how to protect itself from the barbarians in its midst. And the international whirlwind the Jewish state will no doubt reap for having done so will only be made worse by an American president lecturing them about “rage” and about our own “mistakes” after 9/11.
“We should be providing them the tools that they need,” said Secretary Pompeo. “We should be full-throated in their support. We should not be telling them what to do. If we get this wrong, this will reflect badly on America for decades.”
Israelis, though, weren’t the only people to be admonished by Joe Biden. In a flourish that could’ve been uttered by Barack Obama, his former veep said, “You know, and here at home we have to be honest with ourselves. In recent years, too much hate has given too much oxygen, fueling racism, a rise in antisemitism, Islamic-phobia [sic], right here in America.”
This seemed to us a gratuitous swipe at Donald Trump and his supporters. Otherwise, we have no idea what “racism” and “Islamophobia” have to do with Hamas decapitating babies and trying to wipe Israel off the map.
In his speech, Joe Biden encouraged us to “remember who we are.” But as our Mark Alexander quipped, “Biden has a hard enough time remembering who he is.”
Updated with additional commentary about Iran, Israeli “rage,” our 9/11 “mistakes,” and American “racism.”