Cross-Examination

• Biden was angry about the border crisis? A forthcoming book titled The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, written by Chris Whipple, claims that Joe Biden has been furious over the illegal immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border. “Meanwhile, illegal immigrants kept arriving. And Biden was furious,” Whipple writes in an excerpt from the book. “Aides had rarely seen him so angry. From all over the West Wing, you could hear the president cursing, dropping f-bombs (he’d always apologize when women were present).” The book paints a picture of Biden supposedly fit to be tied over the masses of migrants illegally crossing the border, which is awfully odd given that he could have stopped it by immediately reversing course on his administration’s open-border policies. Furthermore, when did Biden finally decide that there was a crisis at the border? He and his administration have steadfastly refused to acknowledge that reality. To this day, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas insists that there is no crisis and that the border is secure. Meanwhile, Biden not only sits by as Title 42 is on the brink of ending, but his administration sued the state of Arizona for building a makeshift border wall out of shipping containers. Since the flood of illegal aliens is undeniable, the Biden administration shifts blame to the Trump administration. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre bemoaned that Biden was left with the “system that was set” by the former administration. Never mind the fact that Biden immediately reversed almost every border policy Trump had put in place. The truth is, as Americans have become increasingly frustrated by the ongoing border crisis, the book is designed to paint a picture of Biden being just as angry if not angrier about the situation than anyone in America. It’s all bogus. Biden created this crisis, and he wants to blame all the bad optics on his predecessor, while at the same time continuing to maintain all his open-border policies that created this crisis in the first place.

• U.S. life expectancy hits lowest level in 25 years: The average life expectancy for an American dropped to 76.4 years in 2021, down from an all-time high of 78.8 years in 2019. That decrease moves U.S. life expectancy down to its lowest level in 25 years and, including 2020, it represents the worst decline in life expectancy in the U.S. over a two-year period since 1923. The primary culprit for the decline has been COVID-related deaths, which the CDC says “contributed to nearly three-fourths, or 74%, of the decline from 2019 to 2020, and 50% of the decline from 2020 to 2021.” Drug overdose deaths have also contributed, with the number rising 16% since 2020. The leading cause of death in America remains heart disease, followed by cancer.

• Kwanzaa, the sham holiday: It’s likely that many Americans have heard of Kwanzaa, but it’s also likely that the vast majority of them know next to nothing about it, including when it’s celebrated. That’s because, for all intents and purposes, Kwanzaa is a sham holiday created by a murderous black nationalist Marxist radical who intended it as an expressly race-based holiday for American blacks. And unlike Kamala Harris, who dubiously claimed to have grown up celebrating the holiday that was created two years after her birth, just 4% of Americans actually celebrate it. Furthermore, despite the official Kwanzaa website’s assertion that the holiday is an “African American and Pan-African holiday … celebrated by millions throughout the world[wide] African community,” almost no one outside of the U.S. even recognizes it, let alone celebrates it. Kwanzaa founder Ronald McKinley Everett, who went by the name “Dr. Maulana Karenga,” expressly stated regarding his creation: “People think it’s African but it’s not. I wanted to give black people a holiday of their own, so I came up with Kwanzaa. I said it was African because you know black people in this country wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American.” Kwanzaa has no religious or spiritual roots, nor does it have any nationalistic historical basis. It was a holiday simply made up out of whole cloth for the promotion of a faux black identity movement. In truth, Kwanzaa has as much holiday legitimacy as does the Seinfeld sitcom’s bogus holiday “Festivus.”

Headlines

• Conservatives balk as Senate passes $1.7 trillion spending bill (Washington Times)

• January 6 report accuses Trump of “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn election and stoke Capitol riot (Washington Examiner)

• Pelosi disses Trump in last press conference as House speaker (Washington Examiner)

• Biden slammed for Christmas “unity” speech after year of political attacks (Fox News)

• Inflation declined to 5.5% in November, according to key gauge watched by Fed (Washington Examiner)

• International migration drove U.S. population growth in 2022 (AP)

• TikTok’s parent company tracked journalists covering the company (Forbes)

• Crypto fraudster and Dem megadonor Bankman-Fried posts $250 million bond (Free Beacon)

• Brittney Griner “welcome home” event draws 20 people (Hot Air)

• Growing evidence shows over-the-counter cold medicine doesn’t really work (NBC Bay Area)

• Woke Nike was a playground for drunken sexual predators, according to just-released documents (PJ Media)

• Humor: Visited by ghosts of January 6 past, present, and future, Trump announces he did everything perfectly (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.