The mainstream media is convinced the debacle over documents is the worst political crisis of President Biden’s tenure in office, even as they provide cover for him and the Department of Justice, but why are they ignoring all of the other disasters on his watch and the steady stream of lies and dissembling that have accompanied them?
President Joe Biden has had a rough couple of weeks in the wake of a document scandal that glaringly reveals his own hypocrisy and, as many suggest, brings into view the double standards that plague our Department of Justice. According to some observers, this is the roughest period of his presidency so far. CNN’s Stephen Collinson described it as “the worst political crisis of his presidency after a failed attempt at damage control over his classified documents controversy landed him with what all White Houses dread – the naming of a special counsel.” The Hill opined that this scandal will “not go quietly away, and even members of the President’s own party have piled on. Representative Adam Schiff has called for a national security review and said the President may have jeopardized national security itself. Representative John Garamendi said there is “no doubt” it is an “embarrassment.” Sadly, these reactions say a lot more about our political class in general than they do about the merits of the scandal. This is an administration that has presided over an ignominious defeat in Afghanistan, the rapid rise of prices for everything from gasoline to eggs followed by a doubling of interest rates, supply chain challenges complete with shortages of baby formula, lackluster economic growth bordering on a recession, the FBI unleashed on parents and anti-abortion activists, an illegal immigration crisis the likes of which we have never seen, and a new land war in Europe, but somehow, the unexpected discovery of about 30 documents in three locations is the “worst political crisis” he’s experienced.
There is little I can think of that so stunningly reveals how little they care about you, your life, and your livelihood. Their interests are solely on protecting President Biden personally and the Democrat Presidency generally. I know I sound like my usual cynical self, but how else can you explain it when all of these catastrophic occurrences were accompanied by a steady stream of dissembling, misleading, and outright lies from the administration, all of which passed by the media and his fellow Democrats with little to no notice? Inflation was supposed to be transitory. The supply chain challenges were temporary as well. Neither had anything to do with the administration. Likewise, there was no chance Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban or we would witness a debacle like our exit from Vietnam. Once both came to pass, the administration promptly informed us that the evacuation effort was among the most ambitious and successful in history. If that tragic sequence of events was not a scandal bordering on an existential crisis for the President, as it surely would have been if someone with an R next to their name was in office, nothing is, but perhaps nothing encapsulates President Biden’s unique combination of abysmal failure and outright lies than the situation with the border. The numbers speak for themselves: Thousands upon thousands streaming across every month, millions per year, record breaking in all respects. Kids are back in cages. The El Paso airport is a homeless shelter. Deadly drugs are flowing like the Rio Grande itself. Coyotes are making huge dollars, raping and abusing women, and people are dying while the Biden Administration targets their own border agents.
These are the facts confronting America today, so much so that even Politico ran the headline “Biden’s Border Crisis is the worst in American History,” but throughout it all, the Biden Administration repeatedly lied to the American people and assures us the border is secure. They are doing everything they can, send more money and pass an amnesty bill pronto. Last November, Representative Dan Bishop asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas if the border was secure. “Secretary Mayorkas, do you continue to maintain that the border is secure?” Secretary Mayorkas responded with a stunning, “Yes, and we are working day in and day out to enhance security, congressman.” Perhaps even worse, the Administration has attempted to claim any problems with the border are the fault of Republicans, either the prior administration by insisting they inherited a mess which just happened to be accompanied by record low border crossings, or even right now while they are in charge. “I want to be very clear here. The fact is that the removal of Title 42 does not mean the border is open,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, referring to the Biden Administration’s effort to end the one policy in place that is currently expelling illegal immigrants in real time, preventing them from officially entering the country in the first place. “Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply doing the work of these smugglers who, again, are spreading misinformation which is very dangerous,” she continued, targeting Republicans who believe removing Title 42 is a disaster waiting to happen. She went even further, “It would be wrong to think the border is open. It is not open.” At the risk of repeating myself, this is a scandal by any rational definition of the term. The type of thing that would topple many another Presidency. After all, people are dying and the administration is lying, but the mainstream media still can’t be bothered.
Nor can they be bothered to look too closely at the President’s own behavior and the obvious deterioration in his mental faculties over the past several years. This past weekend, President Biden forgot the name of his own nominee for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Jackson Brown, in a speech honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. Her name was mangled so badly, even the White House Press Office could not cover it up. They reported on the speech as follows, “‘It took just one generation from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.’” End of quote. Those are the words of Kejan- — Kejan- — Ketanji Jrown [Brown] Jackson, our Supreme Court Justice. (Applause.) It took just one generation, from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States. (Applause.) And as I told folks at the time: She’s smarter than you are.” While he said these words, a black woman on the right of the frame, obviously excited to see the President speak, shakes her head in disbelief. The very next day, President Biden forgot the name of Martin Luther King’s daughter in law, Arndrea Waters King, when he attempted to sing Happy Birthday to her. “Happy birthday, dear Valz-dvit,” he mumbled, eyes searching frantically for the teleprompter. The White House Press Office whitewashed this one by noting only, “Well, look, my wife has a rule in our family. When it’s somebody’s birthday, you sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Are you ready? (Sings ‘Happy Birthday.’)” These are far from isolated incidents. Frequently, the President doesn’t appear to know where he is or why, searching for an exit from the stage or shaking hands with people who aren’t there. It is not for me to diagnose him from afar, but this behavior on the part of the most powerful man in the known universe, all without any explanation and more than a little cover up by the administration, is certainly a scandal. If someone with an R next to their name behaved in this manner, you can be certain the media would be interviewing psychologists on a daily basis as we saw when President Trump walked down a ramp gingerly or picked up a glass of water with two hands. Two short years ago, those were scandals. They should be now, but the media doesn’t care.
The question we should all be asking ourselves is why do they care now? What is it about the document “scandal” that is prompting them to claim it is the “worst political crisis” of Joe Biden’s Presidency when by any objective measure there are at least several candidates that are far worse? This question is made more difficult to answer by the media playing double duty, both talking up the scandal while maintaining that it’s clear President Trump’s own issues with classified documents are much, much worse. The result is an odd spectacle. They are interested in the scandal to some extent, but not in all parts. For example, the President’s legal team has already attempted to conceal the existence of other documents after the first tranche from the Washington, DC office was revealed. On January 9, Richard Sauber, Special Counsel to the President, issued a statement saying a “small number” of classified documents have been found at the Penn Biden Center last fall and the President is fully cooperating. He made no mention that two other sets of documents were found at the President’s home in Wilmington, DE, though he was certainly aware of it at the time. Early last week, they acknowledged the set found in his garage, but it wasn’t until last Thursday that they admitted there was even more documents in another location at the residence. None of this prevented them from claiming “The President’s lawyers have acted immediately and voluntarily to provide the Penn Biden documents to the Archives and the Wilmington documents to the DOJ. We have now publicly released specific details about the documents identified, how they were identified, and where they were found.” As of this writing, the Administration still hasn’t confirmed that the search for documents is completed, meaning there could well be more.
Nor is the behavior of the Department of Justice without question. They knew about the documents for two months, but said and did nothing. They also knew about the second set when they confirmed the existence of the first, but did not reveal this or act to appoint a Special Counsel until after the media reported on the second tranche. Perhaps even worse, The Wall Street Journal claimed earlier this week that they declined to have the FBI participate in the search for additional documents and they are rather incredibly leaving it up to President Biden’s own attorneys. “The Justice Department considered having FBI agents monitor a search by President Biden’s lawyers for classified documents at his homes but decided against it, both to avoid complicating later stages of the investigation and because Mr. Biden’s attorneys had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating, according to people familiar with the matter.” Their reasoning is nothing short of bizarre: “One reason not to involve the FBI at an early stage: That way the Justice Department would preserve the ability to take a tougher line, including executing a future search warrant, if negotiations ever turned hostile, current and former law-enforcement officials said.” So, they are putting the President’s own lawyers in charge because they might not want them in charge in the future? Admittedly, any attempt to divine a reason for this strange behavior is pure speculation, but clearly there are a lot of questions: What did Biden know and when did he know it? Why did the DoJ drag their feet? Did someone from the administration pressure them into any of these decisions? How will we know for sure if all the documents have been recovered?
Rather than answering these questions, the media continues to assert that what President Trump did was obviously far worse, but how could they possibly know when all of these questions are unanswered? Simultaneously, they are running stories expressing concerns about the classification system in general and suggesting it is unfair President Biden is in this position at all. The Guardian, for example, has suddenly discovered that the Espionage Act is too broad, “The Espionage Act is incredibly broad and spares literally no one. Readers of this newspaper may even have violated it,” now they claim. Where were these concerns last summer when former President Trump’s home was raided? Back then, they were telling tales about nuclear secrets, claiming a former President of the United States who was planning to run again had become a spy out of a James Bond film. Yet another means to cover for Biden comes in the form of stories about how the White House is pressing on in the face of scandal, as if they were brave warriors and not hypocrites who shot themselves in the foot. Hence CNN “reported” on “Inside 5 days of a White House determined to maintain business as usual.” “Biden’s advisers, shifting back into the familiar posture that was honed on the campaign trail and is defined by a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude driven by criticism from national media and the Twitter accounts they so closely follow, see the last few days as evidence Biden’s broader policy goals and objectives won’t necessarily be bogged down,” and “even as new developments surfaced that repeatedly caught Biden’s team off guard, they pointed to the fact they stuck to a strategic plan put together in the weeks leading up to the new year.” The result is little more than a love letter to those hard at work against all odds, but it should not be surprising: For whatever reason, this scandal fully reveals the media’s true priorities. They care nothing about you. They don’t care much about President Biden. The progressive agenda, however, must be protected at all costs. Since Biden is currently the vessel for this program, they will protect him as well, at least up to a point.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 