You know, at some point, this has to matter, doesn’t it?
For four years, the mainstream media, Democrats and the Trump-Deranged claimed that anything that President Trump said or tweeted, whether it was gaffe, a mistake, a joke, hyperbole, puffery or, as was indeed often the case, deliberately misleading, was a democracy-threatening lie. This media theme was an exaggeration on its own, and a damaging one, diminishing Trump’s public trust and making it difficult for him to do his job—as indeed was the whole point of the “Trump lies” obsession.
So what is the American public supposed to conclude when President Biden says something that is clear and unequivocal, and the official White House position is that he didn’t say it?
Biden had a disastrous week overseas, as be babbled, stumbled and wandered. I was going to write that the conservative media that “pounced” on his ill-considered comments to the 82nd Airborne regarding Ukraine that “You’re going to see when you’re there, you’re going to see women, young people standing in the middle, in the front of a damn tank saying ‘I’m not leaving” was being a bit hysterical by claiming that Biden risked starting World War III by suggesting that he was sending the 82nd into Ukraine, but it was still a careless gaffe. Biden also called his Secretary of Defense the “Secretary of State.” If Trump had had a trip like this, Bandy Lee would have been insisting that it was time to remove him using the 25th Amendment. (Well, she did anyway.)
But Biden’s mental decline is getting progressively worse, and entering dangerous territory.
“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. For free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness,” Biden said at the end of a speech at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland. They “have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity and freedom and possibilities.” And then he ad-libbed, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Yikes! That is calling for regime change. That is a dangerous escalation of rhetoric. That is bad diplomacy and reckless leadership. Rushing to cover for Joe’s regularly addled brain as it has so often, the White House insisted that Biden hadn’t said what he said, and meant something his words couldn’t possibly convey.
“The President’s point was Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the White House official said.
But he was. There is no possible way to interpret “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!” as meaning, “This man cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.” We all know what “remain in power” means. It means “remain as the leader of his government.”
How can the public continue to respect or trust a White House that treats it as if they are idiots?
Ethics Alarms 
“How can the public continue to respect or trust a White House that treats it as if they are idiots?”
Put a tad less delicately: Just how f*ckin’ STOOPID does Lefty deem their target audience?
Followed closely by the REALLY uncomfortable question – “just how stupid IS their target audience? 30-40% seems to be uncomfortably high on the scale.
Most of those who kiss Biden’s ass think the rest of us are stupid, idiotic rubes with beer guts and bad teeth anyway.
It’s because no one’s paying attention on that side of the aisle. Democrats don’t scrutinize their own. They are relieved, and go on autopilot when we have a Democratic President. We saw it for Obama’s two terms. We were inundated by a constant stream of feel-good smoke screens; celebrities in the Oval Office, children in the Oval Office, the Baby Whisperer and Mom jeans cuteness, dates with Michelle, and the Bromance, the story of two men who rose above both politics and race, the best friendship in the world. That dominated social media for months.
I don’t have one friend who knows of his massive drone strike program, that he deported millions, and that the Bergdahl rescue was likely illegal (or skating too close for comfort), for just a few examples . Any Republican President would be dragged over the coals for doing any of these things without informing the public. Look at Bill Clinton, still adored by Dem women despite Monica Lewinsky and multiple trips to Epstein’s island. The Kennedy clan….Jack the womanizer, and how in hell did Ted (while not a President of course) ever have a career after Chappaquiddick!? He failed to report an accident for what, 8 hours, and left the scene. I’ve been long mystified as to why Democratic politicians are spared criticism and consequences.
If anyone in the current Ethics Alarms commentariat – looking at you, here, Katie – thinks that Biden is in control of his own Presidency, you hove just been handed proof that he is not.
*have.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she is a paid Democrat hack.
I’m not convinced that EA has enough followers to warrant the DNC expenditure. Would love to be proven wrong.
Personally, I hope she sticks around. Right now, she’s parroting WaPo/NYT/social media “common knowledge.” But she DOES write reasonably well. Perhaps she might be able to arrive at an argument that she wasn’t force-fed; I would love to see that, because we need some thoughtful and intelligent progressive voices here. For the past few years, the progressive voices have mostly been riddled by media-induced TDS, which rendered them incapable of independent thought.
I’m not convinced that EA has enough followers to warrant the DNC expenditure.
Go ahead, rub it in.
She’s ok, but a little smug, like she’s getting tired of waiting for us conservatives to catch up.
What Biden said was a international politics Freudian slip, it was his unfettered honest opinion and it was self-evident to everyone exactly what he meant. The White House senior “whitewashing” staff is having a terrible time trying to pass off their blatant gaslighting as truth when the truth is transparently self-evident. This Presidential loose cannon is going to walk us straight into a direct confrontation with the Russian military; I will say this about that; after this ridiculous display of the Russian military’s war fighting skills on the world stage in Ukraine they wouldn’t be able to effectively stop the USA if we started shooting at them with conventional weapons and Putin knows full well that we know it.
Remember the 1990 war in Kuwait; Kwait was not part of NATO and when we started shooting we and our allies pushed Iraq’s military out of that country in days and nearly wiped the military that occupied Kuwait. Do I think that would happen in Ukraine, yes I do but we have Putin in charge in Russia and no one outside of the leadership there knows if he’s completely lost his marbles and is willing to push the nuke buttons or if he’d back down to overwhelming conventional force. This Ukrainian invasion was so badly planned that either the Russian military leadership is tactical imbeciles or this is a Russian ploy for something else that is yet unseen.
No I’m not actually advocating for war with Russia but I’m also not against pushing the Russian military out of Ukraine or kill them all where they stand before they can send in more, a lot more; after all, they invaded a sovereign nation and that action needs to be dealt with severely.
Remember during the Cold War there was aine between the Kremlin and the White House so the leaders could talk to each other immediately to avoid misunderstandings? Sounds like this says such a line might be a liability.
*these days
At this point, I think we have to assume the politicians think we can’t comprehend more than a bumper sticker slogan. I know I question if Joe can understand any nuance at all.
My current assumption is we have had a mass psychotic break in a large part of our population.
Demeter wrote, “At this point, I think we have to assume the politicians think we can’t comprehend more than a bumper sticker slogan.”, “My current assumption is we have had a mass psychotic break in a large part of our population.”
It’s a dumbing down to nothing but propaganda talking point memes that are 280 characters or less with lots of acronym shortcuts instead of the real English language, I’ve heard people talking in short blurbs like that using acronyms walking through the mall in conversation with the person walking beside them, it’s really freaky, I like to call it the Twitter Meme Brain (TMB).
He, he , he, I used an acronym too. 😉
@ Steve Lol. I hate the “Twitter effect” and to a lesser extent the entire social media complex has done to dialogue, I have chosen to no longer engage in it, and I never had a Twitter account, I truly believe the only ones seriously on there are politicians and journalists and that’s created a echo chamber that is cult like. We will find out if people come back to the real world or split into the new metaverse era and reality based on their professions.
For God’s sakes, Biden shouldn’t remain in power!
You’d rather Kamala Harris?
And the answer to THAT question is why Biden is still in power…
Gunter Thomas wrote, “For God’s sakes, Biden shouldn’t remain in power!”
dragin_dragon wrote, “You’d rather Kamala Harris?”
In my opinion that’s a lose-lose ethical conundrum and one that at Biden’s age and perceived mental frailty it’s one that Biden and the Democratic Party should have seriously thought about when choosing a Vice President. Instead they chose to virtue signal and that in itself is signature significant. I keep on asking myself who the heck is the puppet master(s) in the Democratic Party. It’s very clearly that it’s not the ones put in the positions of power like President Biden, Vice President Harris or Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Shadow government?
Rats, the italics was supposed to end after the dragin_dragon quote.
I fixed it.
Thank you.
Very interesting video on the following page about the Budapest Memorandum…
https://www.foxnews.com/world/zelenskyy-representative-blames-budapest-memorandum-signatories-for-ukraines-war
Obviously Gunter only means that Biden shouldn’t be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. Don’t you understand plain English?
Ugh. Double posted. My apologies.
Biden also essentially said that we would use chemical weapons if the Russians did.
“We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.”
Asked a bit later whether the use of chemical weapons would trigger a military response from NATO, he said “It would trigger a response in kind.”
To be fair, I don’t think he meant to say we would use chemical weapons, but it’s further evidence that he often can’t say what he means, and/or doesn’t understand what he’s saying.
Historically, with the USSR, I believe our long time position was that a chemical weapon, as a weapon of mass destruction, was equivalent to a nuclear weapon, as would be biological weapons.
I also remember reading a study in Tom Clancy’s novel “Red Storm Rising” basically stating that a large scale chemical weapons attack would actually be more devastating for the civilian population than tactical nukes.
For NATO, since we don’t have chemical weapons, a ‘response in kind’ to a chemical weapon attack would have to be nuclear.
On the one hand, Biden is old enough to remember all this. On the other hand, Biden may be too old to remember all this.
Yes, actually I do. And I can also read. Can you?