While my free-market friends count themselves among the president’s most fervent detractors, they nearly all make excuses for Biden. I constantly hear reasons why he is the last person who deserves any blame for the Technicolor epic fail that is this administration:
Someone else makes the decisions in the White House.
Biden’s not in control.
He has no idea what’s going on.
Biden doesn’t know what day it is.
Nonsense.
This is Joe Biden’s White House, and he calls the shots — or at least goes along with what happens there and across the executive branch that he oversees.
This has been so since Day 1 of Biden’s presidency. Nobody forced his hand as he signed a slew of executive orders that killed the Keystone XL pipeline, halted construction on President Donald J. Trump’s signature southern-border wall, shredded the Remain-in-Mexico policy, scrapped the 1776 Commission, and so much more.
More recently, Biden fully embraced the $3.5 trillion tax-hike-and-“free”-goodies bacchanal and the $1.2 trillion bridge, tunnel and Green New Deal blowout, both stalled on Capitol Hill — for now.
“I mean, look, the legislation — both the Build Back Better piece, as well as the infrastructure piece — are things that I wrote,” Biden told journalists at the White House on Monday. “These didn’t come from, God love them, Bernie Sanders or AOC or anybody else. I wrote them.”
Biden is often dazed, doddering, and disoriented. Many of his comments are headscratchers. He perpetually seems to need a nap. However, Biden is no Woodrow Wilson. America’s 28th chief executive suffered a severe stroke on Oct. 2, 1919. He spent much of the final 15 months of his administration beneath his blankets. In contrast, Biden visits the Oval Office at least a few days each week. He makes public appearances and occasionally takes questions from the media, although not nearly as often as he should.
On Monday, Biden delivered a divisive speech in which he attacked Senate Republicans for refusing to help Democrats increase the national debt, which Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his comrades had the votes to do on their own. And the president answered 18 questions posed by journalists — adequately, if not eloquently.
Biden is in charge at the White House. He is no centrist puppet being yanked left like Pinocchio by über-liberal advisers Ron Klain and Susan Rice, or Vice President Kamala Harris. When Biden dislikes a policy, he says so — and it fails to score his support.
Biden visited Capitol Hill last week to rally Democrats and narrow their differences. He could have told Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the broader Squad and the House’s other left-wing extremists: “Look. I won the last election as a moderate who would unify this country. That promise requires us Democrats to overcome our disagreements and deliver for the American people. I need AOC and the Left to stand down, follow Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lead and pass this infrastructure bill. Once I sign that into law, the momentum will make it easier to adopt the Build Back Better Act. So, my fellow Democrats, get into line, push the first bill past the finish line, and then we all will unite and enact the second measure.”
If Biden said any such thing to House Democrats, his comments are the best-kept secret under the Rotunda.
Instead, Biden gave the back of his hand to the so-called moderates, aligned himself with the far Left and endorsed its demand to lash these two bills together. Biden, the purported centrist, helped AOC and the Squad shiv these reputed “moderates.”
Which Washington power player approves of, or at least acquiesces in, the Biden administration’s most radical policies?
- The obliteration of America’s “border” with Mexico, coinciding with agents’ encountering 1.25 million illegal aliens from February 1 through August 31.
- The abandonment of energy independence.
- The promotion of critical race theory.
Hint: The Washington heavy-hitter behind these fiascos, and many more, occupies the Resolute Desk.
He is neither in a coma nor intubated. Rather, he is alive, fairly well, reasonably compos mentis and perfectly capable of confronting his staff and saying: “I was elected president, not you. This goes too far.” Biden has done this rarely, if ever.
Biden’s critics must stop letting him off the hook and treating him like his advisers’ hostage.