Joe Biden is outsourcing key policy decisions to Twitter loudmouths

Bumbling US Presidential failure Joe Biden has found a way to make even more errors - he’s now outsourcing key policy decisions to ill-informed Twitter people, writes Tim Blair.

They know he’s a shot duck, so staffers for demented US Presidential liability Joe Biden routinely shout down any reporters attempting to ask him any questions.

They’re now doing the same thing when Biden meets with members of his own party.

“At the end of his remarks, Biden offered to take questions from members but his staff jumped in,” Politico journalist Sarah Ferris reported last week following a Democrat caucus meeting.

“He didn’t take any questions.”

Biden is clearly not in charge of his government, so who is?

Could it be Vice President Kam­ala Harris, the cackling clown from California? Endlessly evasive White House press secretary Jen Psaki? Raptor-clawed 81-year-old house speaker Nancy Pelosi? Those num­erous and belligerent anonymous Biden staffers?

None of the above, at least in terms of border security.

US President Joe Biden continues to bumble along. Picture: AFP

On that contentious issue, the Biden government has outsourced policy to some bloke on Twitter who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

On September 21, minor political player Sawyer Hackett posted images of border guards intercepting Haitian illegal immigrants as they crossed the Rio Grande into the US.

“Border patrol is mounted on horseback rounding up Haitian refugees with whips,” Hackett wrote.

“This is unfathomable cruelty ­towards people fleeing disaster and political ruin. The administration must stop this.”

That assessment was good enough for President Biden and the rest of his absurd administration.

“I promise you those people will pay. There will be consequences,” Biden told a subsequent White House press conference.

Is US Vice President Kamala Harris the one really in charge at the White House? Picture: Nicholas Kamm / AFP

“It’s dangerous, it’s wrong. It sends the wrong message around the world, it sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.”

Press secretary Jen Psaki described the images as “horrific” and “horrible”. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security last week began launched an investigation.

“The footage is extremely troubling,” Homeland Security announced in a statement. “The facts learned from the full investigation, which will be conducted swiftly, will define the appropriate disciplinary actions to be taken.”

Some border patrol guards were placed on leave before that investigation even began.

But there was one slight problem. Border guards never used whips against those Haitian illegals.

Hackett, whose tweet kicked off this madness, had wrongly described as whips the long reins used by horseriding border protection agents.

Unlike jockeys, those guards need extended reins for mobility and control while, for example, reaching down to collar river-jumping ­Haitians.

Migrants, many of them Haitian, sit on the banks of the Rio Grande river before crossing the Mexico-US border last month. Picture: AFP

Freelance photojournalist Paul Ratje, whose photographs were so damagingly misinterpreted by Hackett, told a Texan television station he had “never seen them whip anyone”.

“It can be misconstrued,” Ratje added, “when you’re looking at the picture.”

It sure can. So the story quickly changed. Border guards were next ­accused of using the reins themselves as whips.

The New York Times idiotically promoted this revision, reporting: “The images of agents on horseback chasing, and in some cases using the reins of their horses to strike at running migrants, came as Mr Biden‘s administration moved to forcefully round up and deport more than 2000 of the 15,000 migrants who gathered in a makeshift camp in Del Rio, Texas.”

Wrong again. The Times last week corrected that piece.

“An earlier version … overstated what is known about the behaviour of some Border Patrol agents on horseback,” the Times admitted.

“While the agents waved their reins while pushing migrants back into the Rio Grande, The Times has not seen conclusive evidence that ­migrants were struck with the reins.”

Joe Biden has outsourced key areas of US govt policy to the Twittersphere.

So the story changed yet again. Having been accused of whipping immigrants and then using reins as whips, border guards were next said to have “charged at” the Haitians.

But this, too, was an inaccurate call. Fox News host Lawrence Jones, who is obviously capable of research beyond simply looking at something on Twitter, last week precisely summarised this whole debacle.

“They never touched the Haitian population with the reins of the horse. That is a way to control the horse and how you progress the horse forward,” he told Fox viewers.

“Also, that is a crowd control tactic. Do not train the border patrol agents to do that and then, when they do it, you want to put them on leave.

“I don‘t think that’s fair. And also, this was done to the Mexican population as well. Anybody that’s come across the border, that same tactic has been used.”

Joe Biden, or whoever is running the US government, is now placing on leave and potentially firing border guards for guarding the border.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has offered jobs to unemployed border guards.

And the use of horses has been banned, despite them being the best border-surveillance option in rocky Texan terrain unsuitable for ATVs and motorcycles.

All of this has happened because everyone from the President down took their cues from a solitary tweet by someone who had no idea about what the hell he was looking at.

Good luck dealing with China, Joe. Meanwhile, the guards who Biden promised “will pay” for properly doing their jobs are set for continued employment under a superior ­government.

“If he takes any action against them whatsoever … I want them to know something,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed during Biden’s border hysteria.

“If they are at risk of losing their job by a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas.

“I will hire you to help Texas ­secure our border.”

Too bad they can’t be hired to ­replace the President. That also ­applies to their horses.