Biden's Dementia on Full Public Display

You may recall July of 2018 when President Trump met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Warsaw, Poland.

One does not especially like to traffic in analogies, but this one resonates. 

During the meeting Trump tried to be diplomatic. He failed to mention accusations that Putin had had dissidents assassinated. He tried to establish a connection with Putin. He did not rant and rave like the crazy person we were told that he was.

Naturally, the unhinged American left flew into high dudgeon, using the occasion to shower us all with its impotent rage. American leftists were horrified that Donald Trump did not call the Russian president a murderer to his face.

At the time, I was considerably more rational. The truth of the matter is, if you call a foreign leader a murderer to his face in front of television cameras, it would be a declaration of war. Trump was being diplomatic and judicious. You might not have thought it was tough enough, but macho displays of toughness are long on bravado and short on substance.

Beside, you know and I know that if Trump had said what the left had wanted him to say they would have rose up and called for his impeachment, on the grounds of his being unfit to conduct diplomacy with a foreign country.

Those who see the world in terms of strength and weakness often fail to distinguish between true strength and playacted strength. While Trump was certainly capable of both, with Vladimir Putin his approach was correct and, by the by, there was no war on Ukraine during his administration.

So now we have tough guy Joe Biden, who has recently emerged from his cellar to do a tour of Europe. The purpose of the tour is to show how tough he is and to rally the troops, for what exactly, is not clear.

As you know, Biden is cerebrally impaired, and his impairment has been on full notice during the Ukraine war. After all, even before he stepped foot in Europe he had already called Vladimir Putin a war criminal. To which the Russian foreign ministry responded by saying that Biden was a hair-breadth away from have a diplomatic rupture with Russia. Certainly, that would not advance any negotiations.

One would like, of course, to see the war end. One would like there to be fewer casualties and less destruction in Ukraine. The Biden rhetoric, unhinged or demented, guarantees just the opposite. Making the Western war aim the destruction of Putin makes it impossible for Putin to lose. If he has to level Ukraine, he will level Ukraine. 

If you consider that to be a welcome outcome, say so.

Anyway, yesterday Biden was at it again. He was demonstrating why his handlers do not let him out on his own. 

Speaking in Warsaw, to the cheers of his local supporters who are infatuated with macho posturing, Biden said this:

A dictator, bent on rebuilding an empire, will never erase the people’s love for liberty. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, for free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness. For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

Apparently, the last sentence was ad-libbed. The White House communications team immediately tried to walk it back, explaining that it meant that they were not going to let Putin exercise power over Ukraine. 

So, we have two interpretations. If you were sitting in the Kremlin, would you bet your life on the latter explanation? You would probably shoot a few missiles into Lviv, the better to make a statement.

The Biden administration has already made clear it wants to use economic sanctions to destroy Russia. It is so hellbent on this macho posturing that it has failed to consider the fallout, in the energy markets and in the grain markets. The sanctions will hurt us and will hurt people around the world. The only people who will not be hurt are… you guessed it… the Chinese. They have accumulated stores of everything that is being sanctioned.

Anyway, it was not the first misstatement that Biden made on his European tour. Nowadays every time he picks up a microphone his handlers cringe. One recalls a meeting he had with our troops in Warsaw two days ago. One will emphasize, because no one else is doing so, that the scene showed us that while Biden speaking, his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was bowing his head-- in shame. After all, Austin knows, better than most of us that we can count on senile old Joe to embarrass himself, embarrass his administration and embarrass the country.

Anyway, in the course of his colloquy with the troops Biden suggested that he was going to send American troops into Ukraine:

You know, with the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian people have a lot of backbone, they have a lot of guts and I’m sure you’re observing it. And you’re gonna see when you’re there, and some of you have been there. You’re gonna see, you’re gonna see women, young people standing, standing in the middle, in front of a damn tank, just saying I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground. They’re incredible. But they take a lot of inspiration from us.

The offending phrase was-- “when you’re there.” So, Biden suggested that he, the commander in chief, was going to send American troops into Ukraine.

Given that he had previously said that he would not send American troops to Ukraine, one might forgive foreign leaders for being confused. A president who speaks out of both sides of his mouth is clearly not in control of his policy or his mouth.

Obviously, when he spoke of the man who stopped a column of tanks, he was not talking about Ukraine. He was talking about Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. As we have noted here, the second part of that heroic image deserves to be emphasized. We did not see it on television, but the Chinese government reaction to that act of bravado was to remove the protester and to send the tank column into Tiananmen Square, where it ran over the student encampment, including the student protesters themselves. It is not necessarily a good idea to humiliate tyrants. Most of the time it is a genuinely bad idea.

Of course, there were more misstatements by our cognitively impaired president. Also on his European tour, Biden suggested that if Russia used chemical weapons we would use them too.

When asked what the American response would be to a Russian chemical weapons attack, Biden said:

… it would trigger a response in-kind.

As it happens, this is contrary to stated American policy. So Jake Sullivan had to walk back Biden’s empty threat.

I will not expound at greater length on Joe Biden’s calamitous foray into the public eye. When it comes to exercising leadership, when it comes to playing a role on the world stage, we will not say that Biden is not ready for prime time, because prime time left Joe behind years ago.