Joe and Kamala's Not-So-Excellent Adventures
By Buck Sexton
What exactly did President Joe Biden accomplish at the recent G7 meeting? The only thing we know for sure is... not much.
There were plenty of photo ops – and to be fair, that's what most of these present-day world-leader gabfests devolve into. Germany's Angela Merkel daintily touching elbows with Canada's Justin Trudeau is a far cry from Stalin, FDR, and Churchill at the Yalta Conference.
There were also a number of (to put it gently) evident senior moments where Biden seemed more than a little foggy... Sitting down with other heads of state at a conference table, he interrupted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to remind him to include South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in his introductions, even though Johnson had just said his name.
Amtrak Joe also wandered around aimlessly in front of the cameras to some chuckles from bystanders. And then there was the unsettlingly long pause during a press conference when the commander in chief was asked about Vladimir Putin and started to drift off into mumbles and murmurs.
On the frequent talking point of "standing up to Russia," the media's presentation of Biden has been laughable propaganda... Who can forget the recent cover of Time magazine with Biden's face on it? They tried to make old man Joe look like the second coming of Maverick from Top Gun, with mirrored aviators proudly staring down the Kremlin's premier thug.
If only it were so for Joe... When it comes to Russia, Biden's plans are as muddled as his short-term memory.
What does "standing up to Russia" really mean? Almost all of what Biden says on the subject is pablum meant more as a nod to the "Russia collusion"-obsessed Democrats back at home than meaningful diplomatic pushback.
For the average MSNBC watcher, Putin has been the subject of hysteria for years. Thanks to nightly Russia conspiracy-theorizing by Rachel Maddow and other shows, a widespread Democrat delusion persists that Putin stole the election for Trump in 2016.
And as far as the Russians are concerned, Biden is an effectual clown. It has been considered a truism among the foreign policy intelligentsia for almost 40 years that Biden has been reliably wrong on every decision the U.S. government has faced on the world stage. For our more determined and opportunistic enemies – with Putin certainly high on that list – Biden can easily be outmaneuvered.
The media has not been entirely unprepared for Biden to seem out of his depth or outright confused. Most of their focus has been on presenting him as America's affable grandfather who will adeptly glad-hand our allies while talking tough to the world's neighborhood bullies. While this simplistic narrative around the most powerful man in the world is cynical, it's also reasonably effective politics.
Joe's foreign policy emphasizes "repairing the U.S.'s alliances," which he says have been "damaged" under the Trump administration and claims that he can return the U.S. to a "position of trusted leadership" to counter challenges from Russia and China.
But no honest observer believes that Biden will leave a meaningful mark on foreign policy... Yet Joe has honed the projection of self-effacing affability over decades of political life. While that's not going to mean a thing to Russia or China, it does create enough spin for the Democrat media to portray his first foreign trip as good enough.
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is just happy that last week's news cycle is a thing of the past. The Veep's first trip outside the U.S. to Guatemala and Mexico was generally considered cringeworthy on both sides of the aisle. When asked why Kamala (the "border czar" no less) hadn't actually been to the U.S.-Mexico border, she tried several times to claim that "we" have been to the border.
Even Lester Holt – an NBC News anchor liked by Democrats who expects high-level access from the Biden White House – thought this was too much malarkey for one interview. He forced Kamala to clarify that if by "go to the border" she meant actually going there, then no she has not in fact made the trek...
It was a moment that the VP's handlers and media allies want to brush aside, but it dominated the news cycle for a full day last week – and rightly so... The situation at the border is grave, as I detailed firsthand in Here's What I Witnessed at the Most Lawless Part of the U.S.-Mexico Border.
Kamala's defining political characteristic appears to be phoniness – which anyone who remembers her ill-fated presidential run could see in the data from those in her own party. But despite her obvious charisma deficit, she remains a likely Democrat presidential candidate for the next election... and could become president much sooner than many anticipate.
American presidents, at least when they're Democrats, stand astride the world stage during trips abroad and build their gravitas. With Biden and Harris, the first outing of this administration outside our borders was a reminder that the press corps can only prop them up so much.
Biden has always been a self-interested politico, and a mediocre one at best...
Despite the media's hopes, he cannot carry the world on his shoulders as Atlas. We will be lucky if by the end of this term he can remember what world he's even in.
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