Miranda Devine: Hypocritical Obamas show their elite colours amid Covid misery

There has been much public consternation at the grandiose birthday party plans for former US president Barack Obama, writes Miranda Devine.

News that the Obamas are throwing themselves a big birthday bash at their $12 million estate on the posh ­island of Martha’s Vineyard did not go down well this week, as Americans prepare for reimposed mask mandates and burdensome pandemic restrictions we thought we had left behind.

Former President Barack is turning 60 today, so he and ­Michelle have invited 500 celebrity guests to an outdoor birthday blowout this weekend, reportedly with 200 staff and Pearl Jam for entertainment at their picturesque beachfront.

Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg will jet in, of course. No news on Meghan and Harry.

Martha’s Vineyard has just reimposed social distancing and mask advisories, because of rising cases of the Delta variant, so the Obama party is being slammed for assembling a large number of people during the pandemic.

Former US President Barack Obama is throwing a star-studded birthday party. Picture: AFP

It always seems the elites are thumbing their noses at the rules everyone else is chafing under. It’s been that way throughout the pandemic.

Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser is the latest big cheese Covid hypocrite. On the weekend, just a few days after she reimposed an indoor mask mandate, she was photographed maskless at an indoor wedding reception. But the worst hypocrisy of all is the Biden administration’s blithe indifference to tens of thousands of Covid-­infected illegal migrants surging over the southern border while they’re slapping us with mask mandates and warning of another “dark winter”.

Dr Anthony Fauci was in his element on Sunday television declaring “things are going to get worse” now that the Delta variant on the march. Delta shmelta! What about the lambda?

We seem to have skipped the Greek letters in between but this one is said to be worse than all the others, and it’s coming in from – guess where? Drum roll … South America.

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Browser is a Covid hypocrite. Picture: AFP

Yep. The very same South America where all the illegal migrants are coming from. Technically they’re not all “from” there, since an increasing number of world travellers are getting on planes to Mexico from Eritrea, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leon, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, to name just a few of the nationalities which have ­answered Biden’s siren call of open borders. Australia knows how that works out, after the disastrous boat people days of Labor between the Howard and Abbott governments.

It will happen again under Labor ­because open borders are embedded in the DNA of the left.

The Biden administration has flung open the border and is knowingly ushering in millions of illegal immigrants, many of whom are infected with Covid, without even testing them or keeping track of where they go. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has testified to that fact.

From the limited testing that has been done, 100,000 Covid-infected ­migrants are expected to arrive among the two million-plus this year – in the middle of a pandemic, from a region that is percolating the supposedly worst variant we have seen so far.

US President Joe Biden is the pandemic panicker-in-chief. Picture: AFP

It’s madness, and the fact it’s being done by Joe Biden, the pandemic paranoiac-in-chief, defies belief.

The border crashers are put on buses and planes and covertly shipped around the country to unsuspecting communities, in a violation of the CDC guidelines the rest of us have to follow.

If you are a law-abiding American citizen arriving at an American airport, even if you are fully vaccinated, you have to produce a negative Covid test result from the past one to three days or you won’t be allowed in.

But at the southern border you can wander across, coughing and sneezing, and they’ll give you a welcome pack and send you on your way to spread the disease with the greatest of ease. The only reason we know that’s been happening in the border town of La Joya, Texas, is because the local police department ­issued a public health warning on Facebook last week about sick migrants wandering around without masks.

A concerned citizen flagged down a police officer to complain about a family of migrants in the local Whataburger who were “coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths and not wearing face masks,” the La Joya police department said.

The Whataburger family told the ­officer “they had been apprehended by Border Patrol days prior and were ­released because they were sick with Covid-19”. Sorry, what?

That’s not very compassionate – for the family, let alone for the rest of the community exposed to a wave of ­sneezing super spreaders surging over the border.

The Covid family was being housed at a hotel which had been booked out by Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley to house undocumented immigrants who had been offloaded on to them by Border Patrol.

But the charity did not inform local authorities, complained the La Joya police, who found that a group of 20 to 30 people staying at the hotel were wandering the streets, “out and about, the majority without face masks”.

Catholic Charities claimed the “La Joya  incident  is  an isolated case [which] has caused a great deal of ­misinformation”.

But it’s not just La Joya. The mayor of Weslaco, Texas, issued a statement last week that the same thing had happened there and, again, nobody had warned city officials ahead of time of the influx of Covid carriers.

Barack Obama holding a 60th birthday party at his lavish mansion in Martha's Vineyard.

It is a disaster, not that you’d know it from most of the media. Illegal crossings have soared since Biden took office and, in Ruddesque fashion, immediately ­dismantled all of Donald Trump’s border protections.

Border Control said this week they have recorded 1.3 million migrants in the first six months of this year, and that doesn’t count the “gotaways”. At least 33 border control agents have died from Covid.

The White House continues in Alice in Wonderland style to pretend the situation is perfectly normal.

“We will always be a nation of borders, and we will … continue to work to fortify an orderly immigration system,” a statement issued last week said.

On Friday the administration actually declared that climate change is a “root cause” of migration and unveiled some bogus new strategy. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Of course, Democrats are facilitating this border bust by design, on the ­assumption that illegals will vote for them and keep wages low for their big business pals.

They are not even hiding what they’re up to, as they labour to change election laws to weaken voter ID ­requirements or jettison them alto­gether, so that illegal migrants are ­entitled to vote.

It’s a quick way to lose your country, not that the Obamas and their party guests care.

Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph