Absolving Joe Biden

Last week, on May 31, 2022 to be precise, NBCNews published a report entitled Inside a Biden White House Adrift. Following is the lead paragraph:

“WASHINGTON — Faced with a worsening political predicament, President Joe Biden is pressing aides for a more compelling message and a sharper strategy while bristling at how they’ve tried to stifle the plain-speaking persona that has long been one of his most potent assets.

Biden is rattled by his sinking approval ratings and is looking to regain voters’ confidence that he can provide the sure-handed leadership he promised during the campaign, people close to the president say.”

[For a complete transcript of the article see: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-white-house-adrift-rcna30121

Immediately thereafter, virtually every major media outlet repeated the allegations in the NBCNews story as if they were true and without any independent verification. And here is the reason for reading the story in its entirety. Virtually every allegation is supported by an anonymous person. There is no way that the reader can know whether these allegations are true or not. The reader cannot tell whether the sources are bias, vengeful, riven with political animus, or even in a position to know whether what they are alleged to have told NBCNews was within their spectrum of knowledge. Quite frankly you cannot tell whether any portion of the article is true – with the exception of attributed quotes to people that are unrelated to the central theme of the article – or simply made up by the reporters.

What we do know is that the article in general seeks to cast blame on everyone but Mr. Biden for what can only be described as the worst presidential performance in over nine decades. What we do know is that it is precisely the same position taken by Mr. Biden in response to every crises, mistake, gaff and idiocy that he has caused in the past fourteen months. What we do know is the NBCNews regularly echoes the talking points on these issues emanating from Mr. Biden’s White House.

What we do know is that NBCNews has had a long history of promoting the Democrat narrative in general and President Joe Biden in particular. What we don’t know is whether that support by NBCNews was out of the mistaken belief that Mr. Biden and Vice-president Kalamata Harris were qualified and competent to be President and Vice-president respectively or that the corporate animus of NBCNews and its staff towards President Donald Trump had concluded after viewing the field of Democrat presidential aspirants that Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris were the best they were going to get in a field of far left ideologues.

What we also know is that NBCNews and its affiliates and subsidiaries routinely “manage” the news so as to spike stories critical of Mr. Biden and his family, and publish stories without foundation critical of Mr. Trump and other Republicans who are beginning to rise in national stature. (A recent study debunked the false story that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis manipulate COVID data, see: https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-ron-desantis-governor-covid-data-manipulation-rebekah-jones-ig-report-11654292011?mod=hp_trending_now_opn_pos3 ) More importantly most of those stories contain allegations from anonymous sources and eventually prove to be untrue. Thus it is a legitimate question to ask whether any of the anonymously sourced allegations in the article are true or just more propaganda by NBCNews.

An equally important question is whether the “anonymous” source is in reality Jill Biden, wife of the President. In a recent book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, we are told that that Ms. Biden cared not for Ms. Harris and protested her selection on the basis that Ms. Harris, by innuendo, accused Mr. Biden of being a racist during the Democrat primaries. The book by writers for the New York Times, who like NBCNews, cited anonymous sources for the allegations and suggests that Mr. Biden was forced to accept Ms. Harris to placate the far left wing of the Democrat Party. It would not be untoward for a spouse to protest criticism of her husband nor to seek to blame others for his failures. The effect of the allegation is to free Mr. Biden of responsibility for choosing Ms. Harris who has proven repeatedly that she either refuses to do the work to learn and articulate the issues, or that she is not smart enough to understand and articulate those issues.

The corollary to this denial of responsibility (that Mr. Biden is to blame) is that if they – the mysterious and unnamed members of his administration – would just “let Joe be Joe” the mistakes, catastrophes, bungles and gaffs would end and that Mr. Biden would govern with skill and moderation. To assume that would require you to deny fifty years of demonstrable and historical errors and incompetence exhibited by Mr. Biden as a sitting Senator from Delaware and as Vice-president for former President Barack Obama. The remarkable unbroken string of failures by Mr. Biden, is comparable to the absence of any demonstrable successes by Mr. Biden – other than getting elected and re-elected consistently. What has happened to date IS “letting Joe be Joe.”

This idea that Mr. Biden is not responsible for the catastrophes that define his fourteen months in office is baloney. It doesn’t make any difference how many times Mr. Biden states that he is not responsible, or that his advocates in the mainstream media echo such claims. Mr. Biden is the President of the United States – for better or for worse. If someone else is making these catastrophic decisions, is producing his routine gaffs by Teleprompter, or cuing his stumbling ad libs, the American people should know who they are and either they or Mr. Biden should be removed from office for dereliction of duty.

But removing Mr. Biden from office is never going to happen because waiting in the wings as the constitutional successor is Ms. Harris – and she is even worse by an order of magnitude. (For those of you forced to endure a teachers union led education in the Portland public schools an “order of magnitude” is a mathematical term multiplied by ten for each level of order.)

As the political season heats up, we will be subjected to more and more anonymously sourced stories critical of conservative candidates. They will be echoed by those media outlets who have accepted their roles as public relations advocates for the Democrat’s liberal/progressive politicians. So, a good solution is to simply substitute “baloney” or “codswallop” for the terms of “anonymous” and “sources close to”. It’s not only easy but it makes reading this constant stream of malarkey much more fun.

Inside a Biden White House adrift