The Patriot Post® · Biden: Fenced in After a Year of Failure
Working at the White House hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses lately, but you have to feel for the speechwriters. Trying to spin a year’s worth of disasters into a triumph of modern liberalism would be hard even for the best fiction writers. And yet, heading into Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, that’s the task facing this president: pretending that his failures overseas, the high prices at home, and the deep unpopularity of this administration are all a fulfillment of his promise to do “great things.”
After 13 months of Joe Biden, no one is confident that the man who vowed to answer “the call of history” could even find the phone. In a single year, Americans have gone from economic, energy, border, and national security to dancing on a knife’s edge of inflation, crime, disunity, global upheaval, and war. The last time Joe Biden addressed a joint session of Congress, many have pointed out, he said the country was “ready for takeoff.” How ironic, then, that he’s stuck explaining his crash landing on everything from Kabul to omicron.
Let’s face it, John Nolte argued, “the state of Biden’s union is domestic and worldwide chaos.” “After four years of peace under Trump — of North Korea tamed, of peace deals in the Middle East, of Putin at a total standstill — Biden’s blundering and blustering, his obscene and shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, his dotage and stupidity, his killing of our energy pipelines while approving Putin’s, have all brought about a terrible war in Ukraine. [And where it] could lead is unthinkable.”
And it isn’t just Republicans who think so. In the wake of the devastating assault on Kyiv, the president’s approval rating plunged to an all-time low. In a poll by Biden’s usual apologists — NBC/Washington Post — only 37 percent of Americans approve of the job the president is doing. Far fewer — 33 percent — approve of his handling of Ukraine. Asked if America is “stronger” or “weaker” under Joe Biden, double the respondents (48 percent) agree: “weaker.” Perhaps most damning, the majority of people (62 percent) don’t think Putin would have declared war if “Trump had been president” — including almost 40 percent of Democrats!
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who spends her days trying to rewrite reality, responded to questions about the country’s deep dissatisfaction with Biden by not responding at all. “Leaders lead during crises. That’s exactly what President Biden is doing.” And yet half the country doubts his ability to handle a crisis (not counting at least half of the world who must agree).
Adding to that perception, of course, is the administration’s paranoia of peaceful protests. Terrified by the People’s Convoy rolling into D.C., Democrats have decided to turn the Capitol into Fort Pelosi again. Thanks to the black chain link fence around Washington’s most famous building, Biden looks like he’s preparing for a Russian invasion, not a group of harmless truckers. “Out of an abundance of caution, and in conjunction with the United States Secret Service,” the Capitol Police chief said, “a plan has been approved to put up the inner-perimeter fence around the Capitol building for the State of the Union Address.”
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) couldn’t help pointing out the irony. “So a fence works in Washington, but not the southern border?” His colleague, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), thinks the imagery is especially fitting for this administration. “Joe Biden will deliver the State of the Union to a fully-masked, 50-percent capacity crowd surrounded by a seven-foot fence and 700 national guard troops. Quite symbolic for his failed presidency.”
To most Americans, it’s less about what Biden will say Tuesday and more about what he has done. “The people of the United States are not fools,” Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) warned. “They get what’s going on in this country…” And until this president changes his strategy and confronts the crises at hand, the state of our union will continue to be a dismal one.
Originally published here.
Ukraine’s Most Powerful Weapon — Courage
They came briefly out of their hiding places Monday, desperate to find food before the three-mile Russian convoy makes it to Kyiv. At supermarkets, long lines spread around the block, as Ukrainians — anxious to get back to shelter before more explosions — raced to find anything on sparse shelves. For some, it was the first time they’d been outside in four or five days. As usual, no one has any idea what night will bring.
Outside Kyiv, the world continues to cheer on a Ukraine that most people doubted would still be fighting. Taking their cues from a resolute president, Volodymyr Zelensky, the strength of the grassroots resistance has taken even Russia by surprise. Kremlin officials refused to answer questions early Monday about the progress of the invasion, the latest proof that things aren’t going as Vladimir Putin expected.
In the meantime, satellite images show a huge column of tanks and Russian troops inching closer to the capital city. Heavy street fighting has broken out in almost every district, officials warn, leaving a bloody trail of “unexploded grenades, smoking vehicles, and dead bodies.” In one of the more chilling images, the British Ministry of Defense reported that Putin’s soldiers are bringing along portable incinerators to “evaporate” fallen soldiers. The U.K. defense secretary, Ben Wallace, pointed out, “If I was a soldier and knew that my generals had so little faith in me that they followed me around the battlefield with a mobile crematorium, or I was the mother or father of a son, potentially deployed into a combat zone, and my government thought that the way to cover up losses was a mobile crematorium, I’d be deeply, deeply worried.”
Ceasefire talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations ended early afternoon, punctuated by more bombing in Kyiv. For now, nothing has changed. Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archparchy of Philadelphia urged people to pray. “Ukrainians have had a very hard history,” he said on “Washington Watch.” “Fifty million people were killed in the 20th century by the totalitarian regimes and world wars. Russia has been at war with Ukraine for the last eight years. This is just an escalation, and it’s become a comprehensive war. People are tough, but people don’t want to die. [They’re] afraid for their children, for their families, for their homes…”
If there is one hope, Gudziak said, it’s the country’s tenacity. Momentum, he believes, is on the Ukrainian side. “The Russian army has about 10 times as much resources in the Ukrainian army, but the Russian soldiers really are not motivated. Some of them who have been captured today have confessed that three days ago, they didn’t know what they were [doing]. They were kept in the dark. These are young guys who are being manipulated by a political system… The Ukrainian[s] know this is a fight for the life or death — not only for their country, but their families.”
It would’ve been nice, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) argued, if they had the benefit of the $85 billion dollars of weapons and equipment Biden left in Afghanistan. “It’d [also] be nice if the State Department would be focused on real diplomacy versus… ‘Oh, what pronoun do you what to use?”
It’s the same extremism infecting and distracting our military, Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) pointed out. “General [Mike] Milley sent a pretty poor message when he was concerned about so many social engineering moves rather than what it really takes to fight and win a war… Woke generals and leadership in the House and the Senate — those sort of things, they do not protect the American people… They need to be a thing of the past. We need to move on and get back to what really matters.”
Other U.S. leaders are turning the heat up on Biden over his absurd energy policy, demanding that he crack down on Russia by reopening our pipelines. “We have never seen such a huge gap between the foreign-policy needs of the West in energy and the complete refusal of U.S. policy-makers to resist the special-interest demands of environmental groups…” energy expert James Lucier said.
And yet when George Stephanopoulos pressed White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki about reverting back to the Trump policies Sunday, she towed the green line. “The Keystone Pipeline was not processing oil through the system. That does not solve any problems. That’s a misdiagnosis… of what needs to happen.”
But the real misdiagnosis, the American people have learned painfully, was ever trusting Joe Biden to handle these issues in the first place. As he’s proven from day one, he’ll always put the extreme Left’s interest ahead of our own. In this case, that’s proven fatal — for him and for Ukraine.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.