Earlier on Thursday, I penned a piece on Joe Biden’s less than preferable arrival at NATO, and while I noted at the time that not answering questions showed weakness on the world stage, I can now say with confidence that I was wrong. Biden definitely should not have answered any questions, and that was made evident after his latest press conference.
As per our usual arrangement, the president kicked things off by proclaiming that he had a pre-selected list of reporters to call on. Unfortunately for Biden, because of his litany of failures, that bit of self-protection isn’t nearly as effective as it once was, and several of the reporters nailed him with tough questions.
One of the biggest blunders of the current crisis involving Russia and Ukraine was Joe Biden publicly stating that a “minor incursion” wouldn’t be met with a swift response. That essentially green-lit Vladimir Putin’s entry into the Donbas region. From there, a full-scale invasion was launched into the rest of Ukraine. Yet, when asked about the possible use of chemical weapons by the Russians, Biden made the same mistake again.
Really? It depends on how bad? The president might as well have just given Putin a written invitation to use chemical weapons without recourse. The fog of war will always exist, and if you give a tyrant an inch, they will take a mile. Biden’s response gives the Russians room to use chemical weapons while hiding behind a variety of excuses. What a completely preventable blunder.
But the self-defeating insanity didn’t stop there. Biden moved past that by deciding to repeat a lie that’s been debunked many times regarding the deterrence effect of threatening sanctions. Worse, he then decided to undercut the world’s current response to the Russian invasion.
For the record, the idea that the Biden administration never said the threat of sanctions was meant to deter Putin is completely false. In fact, it’s a falsehood so easily disprovable that it ranks as one of the top lies the president has told during his tenure. Just days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Kamala Harris was in Europe and said pointedly that sanctions were meant to deter. Other administration officials have also said the same thing.
Biden’s lie was so egregious that even CBS News did an immediate fact-check on it.
Returning to the second part of his answer, though, the president then went on to say that the “answer is no,” when asked about whether actions taken today would cause Russia to change course. That’s an incredible admission if he meant to make it, and it’s even worse of one if he’s just so out of it that he didn’t understand what he was saying. Think about it. If nothing that is being done currently is going to cause Russia to change course, then why…are we doing it? What’s the point of any of the sanctions?
Rest assured, though. Biden is the “leader of the free world,” and every European leader has total faith in his ability. I mean, look at him.
I’m not even sure what I just watched, and while I could keep going with more clips that will make you scratch your head (this presser was that bad), I’ll end with a doozy, in which the president starts talking about Nazis, Charlottesville, and January 6th for some reason.
Russia has invaded Europe. Biden is in Brussels at NATO, ostensibly trying to solve that crisis. Yet, the president, for reasons completely unknown to the rest of us, goes off on a tangent about…a neo-Nazi rally that occurred half a decade ago? He then repeats the biggest lie he’s ever told in his career, and it’s one he’s repeated more times than I can count, i.e. that Donald Trump said neo-Nazis were “very fine people.” Further, no police officers were killed on January 6th, nor did any die of physical wounds connected to January 6th either.
In summary, Biden continues to be a shameless liar, and in the case of his foreign policy flubs, they have very real consequences for the world. It remains profoundly disturbing that this man is the President of the United States. Not only is he clearly too mentally gone to do the job, but he’s also just sentient enough to be dangerously vindictive. I’m not sure how the country gets through another three years of this.