“My working theory would be that Joe Biden has prioritized his own reelection. And he’s not even performing well at that. Ironically, his reelection theme seems to be that he — and not Trump — is a man of integrity. I would recommend that the old man step back from the tawdry exercise of getting reelected and actually behave with integrity.”
—Law professor/”Fiercely neutral” blogress Ann Althouse, characterizing President Biden’s contradictory and cynical treatment of Israel after he announced that the U.S. will withhold critical arms support for the attack on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah despite previously agreeing that Hamas had to be destroyed.
Ann adds, “But I suspect he’s too far gone to give us that.”
I was pondering how to frame a post about Biden’s craven perfidy regarding the Hamas-Israel conflict, as he literally tries to take both sides at once in order to avoid rejection by the Democratic Party’s pro-terrorism bloc, which has turned out to be a lot bigger than even critics suspected. Then I read Ann’s post highlighting Jon Podhoretz’s article for Commentary, “Biden’s Shameful Betrayal.” (Full disclosure: I know Jon, and like him: he was a member of my theater company’s board until he moved out of the District.) I don’t think Althouse has been red-pilled exactly—I’ll still lay odds that she ends up voting for Biden—but she seems genuinely disgusted by the age-addled President’s latest example of fecklessness and irresponsible leadership, as should we all.
She chose one of the more vociferous condemnations of Biden’s worst act of cowardice since the Afghanistan withdrawal, but nothing in Jon’s evisceration isn’t accurate. Here’s part of his unrestrained introduction:
Joe Biden deserves nothing but condemnation, censure, and withering contempt for his announcement tonight that he will withhold significant amounts of the recently approved aid to Israel should the government begin a full-on siege of the last Hamas redoubt in, around, and under Rafah…while the president may have felt—wrongly, in my view—that he needed to maintain some rhetorical space from Israel because of the imagined need to keep young people and Arab-Americans in his electoral camp, the actual policies and support he was offering and providing the Jewish state were consistent and solid….
That was then, this is now. That aid package he fought for? He’s now blocking much of it himself—and is promising to do worse in days to come. That support for Israel? He is now pursuing policies that are designed to keep Hamas alive. This long-time friend of Israel? At an incredibly critical moment, he is giving Barack Obama a run for his money as a singularly destructive American “ally.” We’re told the decision to act this way came last week but that Biden wanted to keep it quiet until he delivered his speech commemorating the Holocaust.
That disgraceful and two-faced effort to earn emotional plaudits from speaking strongly about the greatest historical tragedy of the Jewish people even as he was working to cripple the Jewish state suggests Biden possesses a level of chutzpah that would make even the man who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court for being an orphan say “Now you’ve gone too far.”
Yup. Although “chutzpah” is too mild a word for it, perhaps because even Jon with his well-stocked vocabulary couldn’t find a searing enough adjective to describe Biden’s metaphorical shiv in Israel’s back adequately.
Delivering a solemn “never again” speech in remembrance of the Holocaust and pledging “no more October 7’s while secretly preparing to give Hamas exactly what they want and making the U.S. a party to the validation of terrorism as a means of foreign diplomacy is an act of throbbing deception bordering on evil. This President has, with a single act ruthless act of election pandering, ensured more anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses because they have achieved their desired results (so now on to the next demands). He has betrayed an American ally in such a flaming fashion that no nation should ever trust the U.S., or at least one in thrall to the radical progressives, again. He deliberately imperiled the entire Israel war effort—well, to be fair, that’s not what he cares about, just winning some votes from horrible people—making it very possible, even likely, that Hamas will escape with its capacity to slaughter Jews intact, resulting in more and even worse “October 7s.” A former U.S. ambassador to Israel said today, “If Israel doesn’t wipe out the 4,000 Hamas fighters in Rafah, it loses and Hamas wins.”
As Podhoretz and others have pointed out, Biden’s move makes no sense: American precision weapons are the only way Israel can minimize civilian casualties. But making sense isn’t the objective, if Biden is even capable of making sense. Biden’s only objective is winning the votes of Muslims and anti-Semites. He doesn’t really case about Gaza citizen deaths either, apparently.
You can say what you want about Donald Trump and I might well agree. He would never, however, do what Biden has done to Israel, and he has never done anything as President this vile.
To paraphrase Sir Thomas More: “Why Joe, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but to suck up to ignorant student Marxists!”
Ethics Alarms 
I mean… Isn’t this exactly what Democrats impeached Trump for? Withholding approved foreign military aid for personal political value?
I almost mentioned that, but decided that it’s a tangent. But yes, it is very similar. Neither conduct is properly impeachable, and Trump’s use of the funding as a carrot and stick to get what he wanted is in no way as damaging and dastardly as what Joe did, so comparing them minimizes Biden’s wrongful conduct while playing into whataboutism.
As far as I can remember, it was never actually established that he was withholding aid to try and force an investigation of Biden. The left certain believes it’s true, and wants it to be true, but they never proved it. It was Zelensky who brought it into the conversation according to the transcript. If I recall correctly, other people heard the theory from Sondland, who ultimately didn’t have a source for the claim. https://nypost.com/2019/11/20/sondlands-bombshell-turns-out-to-be-merely-his-presumption/
It was a completely BS, political, partisan impeachment, even more than the second one, and anyone who mentions that impeachment to impugn Trump reveals himself or herself as a partisan hack or an ignoramus.
It’s like the President thinks there are very fine people on both sides.
I can feel that burn from here. Well played.
I see people characterizing this as Biden trying to walk a tightrope between Muslim voters and left wing Jews. I think that’s ignoring a much larger block – moderate voters. Biden is now actively courting the “Kill the Jews” vote, not to mention the “Death to America” vote. Does he really think there is any degree of rapprochement with these constituencies that is tolerable to the American Middle? He campaigned in 2020 as a moderate, as a return to normalcy. Obviously he abandoned that charade some time ago, but does he really think he can make up for it by building a coalition of trans activists and jihadis?
Well he is an idiot, you know.
The American Middle is made of Trump voters now. The Democrats are quite far left. It is just that there are a lot of them and they are pretty radical. The college campus people ARE the mainstream of the Democratic Party now. Those to the right are just so brainwashed that they vote Democrat like a Pavlov-trained dog. Biden could send a group of Palestinian protesters from Detroit to burn down a Synagogue live on TV while PRAISING the Holocaust and most Jews in this country would still vote for him. Look at our cities. The Democrats and Democratic policies have utterly destroyed them and those policies are doing the same thing to the entire country. The people in those destroyed cities still vote exclusively Democrat, however. They complain about their ruined schools and still vote for the people who ruined them.
I am of the opinion that the military industrial complex wants these fights to continue indefinitely. If Israel eliminates its enemies Raytheon, and others will not have a steady stream of income from the sale of iron dome munitions. Congress should stop payment for any munitions authorized but not delivered to the authorized end user.
You cannot trust Biden to act in the interests of the United States or our allies. He has given our adversaries in the Middle East and Africa two airfields – Bahgram and another in Niger – and billions of dollars in both lethal aid an equipment for the terrorists to use against us. He has depleted our strategic oil reserve as well as our stockpiles of shells and arms by giving them to Ukraine without any endgame in sight. Is he an agent of our adversaries or is he just stupid? How many times did he distort Trumps comment about NATO members not paying up and allowing Russia to run over them. Biden just waved the white flag of surrender to every despot around the world.
We should demand that Biden go on live TV and explain why he wants Hamas to stay in power and how he stands for Israel by denying them the means to end the fighting. We should demand why he makes no demands on Hamas to deliver the hostages and eliminate their offensive weapons. No aid should go to Gaza until he does so.
I don’t honestly think President Biden – and I should probably begin using quotes around the word President when referring to him, though that might be too disrespectful – does anything more as CiC than (attempt to) read the papers that are put in front of him. I don’t believe he’s making any policy decisions, leading any discussions with his Cabinet regarding policy, or actively communicating in any meaningful way with Congress.
This is not to diminish his culpability, because the buck does stop with him, but is this President really capable of making ANY decision on his own? How could anyone with a fully functioning brain be bothered to sit and listen to the meandering ramblings that must dominate any meeting or conversation with him?
P.S. I love Podhoretz’s writing as well. Twenty years ago, when I was buying yearly subscriptions to “The Weekly Standard” (and buying subscriptions for my dad as well), I looked forward to his contributions a LOT.
Everyone knows that this is true, and this makes his presidency illegitimate. The Constitution doesn’t give others the right to rule in the name of an incapacitated figurehead. The truth is, most Democratic voters were aware of that in 2020 and THAT is what they voted for. They voted for a government by the ‘Interagency Consensus’ mentioned many times in Trump’s trial. They supported the idea that the government needs to be run by the ‘expert class’ and if the President tries to do things differently, it is an impeachable offense. All the Biden voters are really traitors to the Constitution.
I fear nothing Biden (or his handlers) does or doesn’t do will have any effect upon whether or not he will be elected. The media will cover for him, and the Dems control the ballot boxes. I don’t think we’ll ever have another Republican president. The Dems could run a ham sandwich and win.
I see that at least two other commentators have alluded to the “But for Wales!” scene in describing Biden’s betrayal. “But for Michigan!” is the simplest version, I’ll concede.
I still beat them both.