Biden honeymoon coming to an end despite slavish media coverage
Despite a dream run of minimal media scrutiny, the US president’s short hours and ethical problems are becoming a problem, writes Miranda Devine.
Opinion
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“President Biden has expressed a preference for a fire built in the Oval Office fireplace, and sometimes adds a log himself to keep it going.”
This is the hard-hitting reporting CNN gives us from the White House these days.
“First Lady Jill Biden Wore a Scrunchie While Shopping and People Felt So Seen,” was the headline of another puff piece in Glamour Magazine this week.
It’s a long way from: “Chronicling Trump’s 10 worst abuses of power” which was typical CNN fare when Donald Trump was president.
The Bidens are enjoying a double-strength honeymoon to make up for the one the Trumps never had.
But despite the protection racket being run by their media lapdogs, it hasn’t taken long for the wheels to come off the clown car that is Democratic politics in America.
In less than a month Biden has allowed tens of thousands of illegal migrants to flood across the southern border in a gigantic COVID “super spreader” event.
He has carelessly destroyed thousands of jobs on the Keystone XL pipeline with a stroke of a pen.
He injected critical race theory into the government’s DNA.
He is allowing his family to keep cashing in at the nation’s expense, “calls a lid” most days before 4pm and goofs off on weekends.
Democrats might have won the presidential election and installed a cognitively challenged 78-year-old in the White House but now they have all the power, uncomfortable truths are starting to come out.
Take New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He was used as a foil by Joe to contrast his handling of the pandemic to Trump’s.
No governor has been burdened with so much praise. Joe gushed last year that Cuomo was the “gold standard” for leadership in the pandemic.
But now Trump has gone and propping up Cuomo is no longer necessary, even the New York Times is reporting the truth about his ghastly record.
Cuomo forced 9000 COVID patients out of hospitals into nursing homes and then proceeded to cover up the inevitable deaths. Nursing homes account for 15,000 COVID deaths, 40 per cent of the state’s total deaths. Trump sent the USNS Comfort hospital ship to New York and a field hospital but Cuomo left them empty to spite him.
So if Biden praises your character, it’s probably time to go to confession.
That goes for another Biden ally, the Lincoln Project, a group of never-Trumper grifters, who hoovered up $90 million in donations, most of which they spent on themselves, while turning a blind eye to the alleged predatory sexual harassment of young males, including a 14-year-old, by one of their co-founders.
Closer to home is Biden’s Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo, exposed last week for deriding a Politico reporter with sexist vulgarities and threatening “I will destroy you”.
Ducklo’s initial punishment was a week without pay.
It was a far cry from Joe’s Inauguration Day threat to staffers: “Disrespect or talk down to someone [and] I will fire you on the spot, no ifs, no buts.”
On Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki, tried to justify Ducklo’s behaviour as a natural consequence of Politico reporting on his “private life”.
Ducklo finally resigned on Saturday night but the delay said it all.
Talk is cheap in the Biden White House.
Best of all is Hunter Biden, Joe’s wayward 51-year old son, who is still in business with the Chinese Communist Party, as Psaki admitted when she said he still owns 10 per cent of Chinese equity firm BHR Partners.
So much for Joe’s promise that “No one in my family will … have any business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country. Period. Period. End of story.”
Of course, after the election, Joe watered down the rule to a vague statement about “appropriate distance” from the presidency.
Joe’s brothers Frank and Jim know what the rubbery rules mean: the Biden influence-peddling business can continue as before, only better.
Frank wasted no time, with a two-page newspaper ad on Inauguration Day, touting his relationship with “my brother” for the Florida law firm which pays him as an adviser, even though he isn’t a lawyer.
There is still the pesky issue of federal criminal investigations hanging over the heads of Hunter and Jim, another truth bomb hidden from the American people until after the election.
Don’t you worry about that. Joe has installed the law partner of Hunter’s defence lawyer to lead the Justice Department’s criminal division.
Meanwhile, Joe is doing his best to promote Hunter’s new book.
In an interview before CBS’ Superbowl audience of 96 million people, in the very week the publisher launched the marketing campaign, Joe declared he had read the book and it was wonderful.
Joe is big on ethics.
In an interview with People magazine this week, he boasted that he was restoring “trust” in government and told a curious tale: “I remember years ago an accountant said, ‘You know, you can charge part of the gas you use in the vehicle at your home.’ And I said ‘No’.
“Here’s how I look at it: The foul line is 15ft away from the basket. Never get me closer than 17ft, because it really is a matter of the public trust.”
Few things are more black-and-white in business expense claims than claiming money for petrol.
There is no need to move his supposed ethical “foul line” further than everyone else’s, because the rules are utterly straightforward.
Joe was pretending, as he has his entire career, that he is more honest than the average Joe.
“The President is committed to ensuring we have the most ethically vigorous administration in history,” Psaki told reporters last month.
It’s a refrain we hear often from Joe.
But people who feel the need constantly to tell you how honest and ethical they are, in life always turn out to be quite the opposite.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph
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