Joe Biden Is Confused

It isn’t just Joe Biden. Clearly, our president continued to misrepresent his record while talking with George Stephanopolis Friday night. 

Nothing strange about that. Politicians are in the business of distortion, what Eli Lake called alternative facts.

The media has a problem. It has been lying about Joe Biden’s mental acuity for lo these many years. Now, it has been caught in a lie and it is hard at work covering up.

And yet, as we saw yesterday in the Olivia Nuzzi New York Magazine article, the belated exposure of Biden’s cognitive impairment is accompanied by an assertion that he was a great president. And of course, that Donald Trump would be a complete and utter calamity. 

For his detractors Trump is nothing other than the Antichrist, the Biblical beast that embodies all evils an that must be destroyed in order to allow the Heavenly City to descend on the earth. I expounded at some length on this last Thursday.

So, Eli Lake offered the right commentary after the Biden- Stephanopoulos interview. For example, Biden claimed that he had put together a plan for Middle East peace. Lake called it “wishcasting.”

Meanwhile, the substance of Biden’s interview offered what would charitably be called wishcasting. For example, the president said, “I also was the guy who put together a peace plan for the Middle East that may be coming to fruition.”

Of course, this is wish fulfillment. When Trump was in charge, he put together the Abraham Accords, a plan for Middle East peace. And, when Trump was in charge, there was no October 7 or war in Gaza. 

Lake exposes the subterfuge:

But there is no actual peace plan for the Middle East. There has been diplomacy between Biden’s envoys and Israeli and Saudi leaders, but the proposal does not address the war in Gaza or calm the escalating crisis between Hezbollah and the Jewish state. It is rather an ambitious deal that would offer a peace process for the Palestinians and a path to diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Iranian-backed proxies who are belligerents in the current war have not been part of that diplomacy. 

Iranian backed proxies have been shooting at American troops in the Middle East. Iranian backed proxies have shut down shipping in the Red Sea. The Biden administration refused to apply sanctions to Iranian petroleum exports, thus aiding and abetting and funding terrorism. 

Precisely why this is a record of achievement escapes me.

And then there is China. Its government is doing what it wants to do, undeterred by the Biden administration. Lake explains:

On China, Biden’s claims were even more baffling. As he boasted about his record, he said, “Who’s gonna be able to be in a position where I’m able to keep the Pacific Basin in a position where we’re—we’re at least checkmating China now?” 

But China is hardly checkmated. Though Biden has strengthened U.S. alliances with some of China’s neighbors, China has managed to find its way out of its Covid-induced economic slump and has fully aligned with Russia in its war against Ukraine while it continues to menace Taiwan.

One recalls the beginning of the Ukraine war when the Biden administration asked China  to intervene with its ally Russia and to recommend that Putin not invade. And one recalls that the Chinese government asked the Biden people for access to their intelligence.

Biden handed it over, and the Chinese passed it along to Russia. Obviously, China made no effort to stop Putin from invading Ukraine.

The Ukraine war was not a foreign policy triumph. As you know, Biden has bragged about how he organized the nations of NATO to support the Ukrainian side, but would it not have been better if there had been no war to begin with. Surely, it represents a waste of human life and human resources.

So, the Trump conduct of foreign affairs did not produce a war in Ukraine. The Biden conduct did. Naturally, Biden’s supporters are up in arms about the horrors that the Trump presidency will unleash on the world.

Dare we say that, Biden has no real sense of objective reality. Consider this exchange with Stephanopoulos: 

Biden also said he continues to draw enthusiastic crowds as he did in a campaign event on Friday. “How many people draw crowds like I did today? You find me more enthusiastic than today?” he said. 

That answer was even too much for Stephanopoulos. “I don’t think you wanna play the crowd game,” he responded. “Donald Trump can draw big crowds. There’s no question about that.” 

Aside from the gross inaccuracy of the claim, the truth of the matter is, as Stephanopoulos pointed out, the one who draws the biggest crowds is Trump.

Does this suggest that Biden does not know who he is? Does it mean that he has mistaken himself for Trump and wants to take credit for Trump’s achievements? Strangely, his supporters cheer from the peanut gallery. They are so lathered up over Trump that they attribute Trump’s successes to Biden. They have completely lost their minds.

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