The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Even With Friendly Media, ‘Sundown Joe’ Continues Embarrassing Himself

Posted on | August 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Even With Friendly Media, ‘Sundown Joe’ Continues Embarrassing Himself

Glenn Reynolds describes the media as “Democratic Party operatives with bylines,” and this is quite literally true in the case of George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, who worked for Mike Dukakis and Dick Gephardt before joining Team Clinton in the 1992 campaign. So when Joe Biden’s handlers needed a friendly venue for the alleged president’s first interview since the Kabul catastrophe, George got the call.

Stephanopoulos did his best to help the Alzheimer’s patient, as for example, giving Sundown Joe an opportunity to display his famous (or perhaps I should say, mythical) “compassion,” with this softball:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But we’ve all seen the pictures. We’ve seen those hundreds of people packed into a C-17. You’ve seen Afghans falling–
BIDEN: That was four days ago, five days ago.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What did you think when you first saw those pictures?
BIDEN: What I thought was we ha– we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did.

Do you see how off-key that was? Stephanopoulos was trying to pitch an easy one at Joe, with the idea that he would react with expressions of sympathy. Bite your lip. Shake your head. Use the word “tragic” — any skilled politician knows how to respond appropriately. But instead, Biden lashed out and got the number of days wrong, too.

It “is spectacularly odd . . . that Biden is reacting as if he thinks Stephanopolous was bringing up irrelevant ancient history,” Jim Geraghty writes. “Why was Biden indignant that Stephanopolous was asking about those horrifying sights?” The emotion was inappropriate, as if Biden believed Stephanopoulos was deliberately unfair to him.

This kind of inappropriate anger is symptomatic of Alzheimer’s. Any clinician would recognize the symptoms, but you don’t need a medical degree to see that Joe’s mental function is declining rapidly. His handlers at the White House obviously know this, as Geraghty notes:

This is a highly unusual schedule for a president during a foreign-policy crisis. . . . Biden is barely appearing in public, not saying much of anything when he does, not answering any questions outside of his lone scheduled interview, and sounding angry when he did face questions from Stephanopoulos. . . .
The obvious answer to why Biden rarely appears on camera or takes questions is because every time he does it, he inflicts more damage upon himself and his agenda. The president whose empathy is endlessly touted now sounds cold and dismissive when asked about Afghans’ desperately crowding into American planes or falling to their deaths. All of the available evidence indicates that the president ignored the warnings of his foreign-policy team, withdrew the armed forces before evacuating the civilians, gave up Bagram Air Base, and now is in a large-scale foreign crisis that is mostly the result of his own choices. . . .
Something is wrong with President Biden, and we are all being asked to pretend we don’t notice.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Charlie “Three Wives” Sykes is rightly embarrassed:

It’s. Not. Good. And I say this as someone who supported, touted, and embraced Biden’s candidacy. Because competence, normalcy, decency, empathy. . . .
Instead, we were reminded of some hard truths about the man some of us thought might restore the soul of the country: He is a vastly better man and president than Donald Trump, but he’s got a long, long record of getting foreign policy wrong.

Why did Sykes let hatred for Trump wreck his mind to the point that he could be so deluded as to view Joe Biden as a potential secular savior?

I could probably expend a couple thousand words on an attempt to explain the motivations of Sykes and the other #NeverTrump types, but to quote a former Secretary of State, what difference at this point does it make? Their fate is ironic, in that they wanted to be perceived as mature and serious, but ended up looking ridiculously childish.

Probably best to ignore them, to let them languish in irrelevant obscurity, as the unavoidable consequence of their own foolish choices.




 

Category: Joe Biden

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