Joe biden

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump backs the GOP establishment

From our US edition

Former president Donald Trump helped out the GOP establishment with his latest round of congressional endorsements — including one particularly notable one where he passed over a guy he endorsed in the last election cycle.Just two years ago, Trump endorsed Darren Bailey for governor of Illinois, snubbing the state’s GOP establishment, which had been firmly behind Aurora mayor Richard Irvin. Bailey blew Irvin out of the water in the primary — thanks to additional support from Democrats who successfully meddled in the primary —and was dismantled by J.B. Pritzker in November.This time around, Trump is backing Congressman Mike Bost, who’s been fending off a primary bid from Bailey.

Tuesday

Matthew Foldi

Biden campaign recruiting ‘director of celebrity outreach’

From our US edition

President Joe Biden is planning to use his upcoming State of the Union address to “reset” his image with voters — and if the jobs section of his campaign website is any indication of his priorities, he’ll be leaning a lot on celebrity backers. Amid an onslaught of speculation about a potential second Taylor Swift endorsement of Biden, The Spectator scrolled through the Biden job board and found several interesting open positions, including a director of celebrity outreach role that will pay a lucky applicant up to $120,000. In a tenor befitting of a scatterbrained president, the job posting is pretty confusing: it says that it is for the director and deputy director role in different places.

celebrity

Friday

Cockburn

Who wants to cruise in Joe Biden’s Cadillac?

From our US edition

Interested in swapping seats with President Joe Biden? The Oval Office desk chair isn’t up for grabs — at least, not yet — but you are welcome to bid on a Cadillac once leased by Amtrak Joe. Since the DMV presumably took the keys away from the well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, Biden will no longer need those hot wheels with the custom Kona Brown interior. If you’re lucky, the sedan may even come with a few boxes of classified documents in the trunk, assuming the DoJ didn’t find them all during its last sweep. The car, which Delaware Cadillac is selling, has fewer than 16,000 miles on it, perhaps another testament to Biden’s purported love of public transportation.

navalny opponents
Ben Domenech

Will the West make Putin regret the death of Navalny?

From our US edition

The death of Alexei Navalny, announced a week after Vladimir Putin's sit-down interview with Tucker Carlson and reported as senior officials gather for a security summit in Germany, is an expression of the ruthlessness of the Russian authoritarian. Add Navalny to the list of foes Putin's regime has assassinated — the most prominent since Boris Nemtsov was shot to death while crossing a bridge — and know that so long as the current regime is in power, it will continue to assassinate anyone who rises up against it. Whether they die by poison or bullet or walking in a prison yard north of the Arctic Circle, it's all the same to him. Navalny's defiant stand in opposition to the corrupt Putin regime is the definition of courage.

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

The media’s war on your eyes and ears

From our US edition

Ever since the release of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s illegal handling of classified materials and documents (he “stored” them in open boxes and grocery bags in his home garage, where Hunter Biden crashed during the pandemic), there has been a media blitz to combat its characterization of the president as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Notes in the report also revealed that Biden had trouble remembering key dates from his personal and professional biography, like when he served as vice president or the year that his son Beau died of brain cancer.

Amber Duke

How Biden is planning to up-end Title IX

From our US edition

Earlier this month, Biden’s Department of Education finally submitted its proposed Title IX rule changes over to the White House for review. Biden’s DoE has been hard at work to unravel Title IX rules made by its secretary under the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos. DeVos, you might recall, had enshrined all sorts of due process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct on campus amid a spate of high-profile false accusations.

Ben Domenech

The big 2024 question for Democrats isn’t Joe Biden’s age

From our US edition

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week I want you to consider: what’s the biggest 2024 question for Democrats? You might assume that it’s Joe Biden’s age, infirmity and feeblemindedness — particularly after the Robert Hur report dropped last week. It certainly set the White House and the Biden campaign on edge — and now they’re dealing with the thorny question of whether they should release the transcript of Hur’s interviews with the president. On the one hand, it could provide information useful to Democrats pushing back against critics — see, he was just distracted by Israel, he just botched a few dates, Joe’s fine!

Tuesday

Cockburn

WATCH: Jon Stewart jabs at Biden and Trump’s age in Daily Show return

From our US edition

After more than eight years away from the anchor desk, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Monday night for its election 2024 coverage. The late-night host came out swinging with pointed jokes at both eighty-one-year-old Joe Biden and seventy-seven-year-old Donald Trump. "They are the oldest people ever to run for president, breaking, by only four years, the record that they set,” Stewart said.  https://twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/1757253512625586177?s=46&t=KTzG0soGgiCKUdkuiUQOwA Cockburn can’t say that Stewart’s attacks on the elderly presidential candidates are all that original, but it’s a marked improvement on the hackneyed, partisan commentary of his successor Trevor Noah.

jon stewart
warren wealth tax
Lewis M. Andrews

The trouble with the progressives’ proposed wealth tax

From our US edition

As the level of US debt zooms past the $34 trillion mark, it has become increasingly clear that the American left has no intention of trying to help control government spending. To the extent that annual deficits must be trimmed to protect the integrity of the nation’s currency, Democrats and their allies are instead planning to go beyond the current progressive tax on income and institute a new levy on citizens’ assets. Some such as Senator Elizabeth Warren openly advocate taking the conventional idea of a property tax and applying it to everything a person owns — cash, savings accounts, stocks, jewelry and even art.

Sunday

Charles Lipson

The stalemate on illegal immigration

From our US edition

Few moments are less promising to reach a bipartisan deal than the months before a presidential election. And few issues present greater obstacles than limiting illegal immigration. Even the word “illegal” is contested. Progressives say it is too harsh. Conservatives say it is simply truthful. It is no surprise, then, that the compromise “border-security bill” gasped its final breath this week. The Senate bill, negotiated by a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent, met a hostile reception as soon as the text was released. House Speaker Mike Johnson declared it “dead on arrival.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reluctantly brought it up for a procedural vote, where it went down in flames. Why such stiff opposition?

james lankford border illegal immigration

Saturday

Teresa Mull

Trump goes through the motions for the NRA

From our US edition

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Having lingered a little too long at a Scottish outfitter’s booth learning about the art of falconry, I assumed I’d be relegated to the overflow arena of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex, where Donald Trump was addressing attendees of the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show last night. I was surprised to learn from a friendly security guard, however, that there were said to be some seats still available in the nosebleeds of the main arena. I tried my luck at the handiest entrance, and a kind man with a cane and his three companions all stood up and made way for me to sit in a prime seat.

trump nra harrisburg

Friday

The Spectator

Who’s to blame for Biden’s angry presser?

From our US edition

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since President Joe Biden trotted out to the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room to deliver remarks about Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on the president’s retention of classified documents. If you’d like a recap of how that went, you can read my piece here. It’s safe to say that, with the exception of a few shameless administration apologists, DC collectively saw the press conference as an absolute trainwreck. Now, journalists are trying to get to the bottom of who planned the ill-fated public appearance for the president. Was it the president himself, furious at Hur’s report, who demanded he appear in a previously unscheduled event that was announced fifteen minutes prior to its start time?

biden presser
joe biden democrats
Ben Domenech

Democrats face a self-reinforcing 2024 nightmare

From our US edition

Yesterday was a year’s worth of a rising wave that came crashing down on Democratic hopes for 2024. They had hoped Republicans, motivated in part by constant lawfare attacks, would nominate Donald Trump — only to tear their party apart during the summer as denial of election eligibility in key states made clear he had no path to victory. They had hoped that by carefully managing Joe Biden, with access even more locked down than during the height of the pandemic, would survive questions of age and infirmity. And they had assumed the special counsel's report, while sure to include some damning equivalence with Trump’s stacks of Mar-a-Lago memorabilia, would be a story for a news cycle, easily survived and ultimately unmemorable.

Thursday

Amber Duke

A car-crash clean-up press conference Biden will hope to forget

From our US edition

President Joe Biden surprised the American people Thursday night by delivering previously unscheduled remarks on his classified documents scandal — and promptly created an unmitigated PR disaster. Earlier in the day, the special counsel investigating Biden’s improper retention and storage of classified documents issued his report. Robert Hur found the president did mishandle documents, broke national security law and undermined national security by releasing classified information to his ghostwriter. However, perhaps even more damning, Hur declined to recommend charges against the president, asserting that he presents as a “well-meaning” elderly man with a poor memory.

joe biden press
Grace Curley

Robert Hur’s brutal report should mark the beginning of the end of the Biden era

From our US edition

Special Counsel Robert Hur predictably concluded that President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents when he was a senator and vice president do not warrant criminal charges.  But unfortunately for the White House, Hur’s recommendations to the Justice Department quickly became background noise. Instead, his unsparing descriptions of the commander-in-chief took center stage.  None of Hur’s characterizations should surprise anyone who has watched Joe Biden for more than forty-five seconds over the last three and a half years. It’s not like the American people have had only one opportunity to catch Biden seeing dead people. There was a second and third showing.

robert hur
Roger Kimball

The Justice Department won’t prosecute Biden? Color me shocked

From our US edition

“No reasonable prosecutor”: remember him? He’s back! No, not James “Higher Loyalty” Comey. He’s sitting in a corner somewhere counting his doubloons. But like some inky creatures of the deep, he emitted lots of spawn. They’re maturing now and taking after dear old dad.  Remember the original sitcom. Despite the best efforts of every one from the country’s “intelligence” chiefs to its fawning media, news emerged that Hillary Clinton had essentially run the State Department from an insecure server in her home.  On that server, it transpired, there were thousands of classified documents (along, of course, with yoga routines and plans for her daughter’s wedding).

joe biden
Ben Domenech

SCOTUS seems ready to side with Trump

From our US edition

Welcome to Thunderdome, where we could be about to witness a “dog who caught the car” moment for the MSNBC set that pushed this Colorado case so vociferously. I wonder if they regret this move? Do they understand that a nearly unanimous rejection makes them look very silly? And do they understand that every legal win Donald Trump has from here on out hurt their overall lawfare plan of attack? The WSJ reports on the morning’s oral arguments: A Supreme Court decision affirming that ruling would “take away the votes of potentially tens of millions of Americans,” Mitchell said.Signaling sympathy for that argument, Justice Samuel Alito said the Colorado ruling could have severe consequences if upheld.

Tuesday

Matthew Foldi

Inside the Biden administration’s indifference towards rescuing Americans from Afghanistan

From our US edition

At the time of the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden administration officials said behind closed doors that secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan “don’t give a fuck” about rescuing Americans from the clutches of the Taliban. The admission came on a late August 2021 phone call held between the Department of Defense and congressional Democrats, based on The Spectator’s review of contemporaneous text messages. During the conversation, a Pentagon official acknowledged in response to frustration from Democrats that two of the senior-most officials working on the evacuation — Blinken and Sullivan — were indifferent to the plight of their fellow Americans.

afghanistan kabul

Saturday

Roger Kimball

Biden’s action in Iraq and Syria is merely delayed reaction

From our US edition

What do you think of the apothegm “Better late than never?” I think it is often dubious. For confirmation, I adduce the airstrike the Biden administration just conducted against eighty-five targets in Iraq and Syria. The attacks, against infrastructure associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, are billed as the opening salvo in response to last week’s drone attack by Iranian assets in Jordan that left three Americans dead and more than forty injured. Taking a page from an earlier, square-jawed time, officials from the administration tersely commented that America’s “multi-tiered” response would continue at a “time and in a manner of our choosing.”  Spoken like a real administration. I wonder from what storeroom they got the script?

air strikes iraq syria

Friday

Cockburn

PETA comes for Punxsutawney Phil

From our US edition

The ever-joyful People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have put the nail in their no-fun coffin by announcing a new target: the bizarre and beloved Pennsylvania-Dutch tradition of pulling a groundhog out of his burrow to predict the weather.  On this Groundhog Day morning, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring, but PETA had to go and rain on everyone’s parade by reminding us that Phil “is not a meteorologist.”  PETA branded the celebration “a cruel holiday display” because groundhogs are “naturally shy, sensitive prey animals who react poorly when handled in front of raucous crowds.