Joe biden

White House digs deeper on border crisis

From our US edition

The Biden administration has repeatedly refused to take its self-created border crisis seriously. Last week, they sent Vice President Kamala Harris to Guatemala and Mexico to address the 'root causes' of the recent surge in migration, one of which she identified as 'climate change’. Harris promised to throw more money at the problem and laughed at the idea that she should go to the border and see the crisis firsthand. Today, the White House sent out a press release insisting that they are taking serious action on what they call the 'border challenge’. The email starts out with a couple of factual whoppers. It claims that 'the trend of border apprehensions in May is a reduction of individuals (unique encounters) and families below the peak in 2019’.

US Vice President Kamala Harris traveling to Guatemala (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

The president of platitudes

From our US edition

President Joe Biden turned up almost three hours late to his Nato press conference tonight. He offered no apology, because, well, why should he? He then gave a short speech. It was adequate enough, albeit predictable and rigid — read as it was almost entirely from a teleprompter. It wouldn’t be Biden if he didn't open with a gaffe, though. He managed to stumble early by saying ‘we’re still averaging in the last seven days the loss of 300 deaths per day.’ In answer to a press question about Putin, he said ‘I’ll be happy to discuss with you when it’s over, not before, about what the discussion will entail’. That didn’t make much sense. He successfully quoted Benjamin Disraeli and said ‘the proof will be in the pudding’ without jumbling the words.

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insisting china

‘Insisting’ and ‘demanding’ will get us nowhere with China

From our US edition

How can America hold China to account? Its ruling party has committed human rights abuses and bears responsibility for the pandemic that has killed an estimated three million people and crashed economies worldwide. The Biden administration is making feckless requests of the CCP — and not demanded much more. As questions mount about the origins of the COVID-19 virus and the growing possibility that it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may even be an engineered virus created through gain-of-function research, (research in-part outsourced and paid for by American taxpayers), begging China to cooperate with the US, its allies and the World Health Organization isn’t going to cut it.

The increasing cruelty of the North Korean regime

On a humid summer’s day in Singapore three years ago today, Donald Trump became the first incumbent US president to meet with his North Korean counterpart. For all of the summit’s theatre, Kim Jong-un’s pledge to ‘work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula’ seems unlikely to be realised. Three years on, and the country shows little intention of either abandoning its nuclear ambitions or reforming Pyongyang. Instead, the regime has tightened its control over society, not least ideologically, after the failure of the Supreme Leader’s five-year economic plan. In 2018, the leadership assured North Koreans that the country had achieved its primary geopolitical aim of becoming a ‘fully-fledged nuclear state’.

The other Joe

From our US edition

Conservatives view Joe Manchin as an untrustworthy flip-flopper. Liberals see him as a roadblock on their path to Woketopia. But for President Joe Biden, Manchin might be something else — a much-needed excuse. Every party needs a pooper, right? Well, Manchin might be the buzzkill the Democrats’ out-of-control shindig needs. Unlike 'Lunch Bucket' Joe, who has killed thousands of Keystone XL Pipeline jobs and proposed trillions of dollars in spending, Manchin is in-tune with the average American. That isn’t saying much. Joe Biden has spent more time conversing with the members of the Squad and answering questions from YouTube influencers than he has spent reaching out to Republicans. In 2021, it is easier for a politician to fall fully in-line with their respective party.

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Is Biden coming around to Boris?

Today’s US-UK diplomacy didn’t get off to the best start, with the Times breaking the remarkable news about a US demarche — or diplomatic rebuke — to the UK government to complain about its approach to the Northern Ireland protocol. But the day has ended in a better place for the UK government. The US-UK joint statement contains a section on Northern Ireland that is far more nuanced than the demarche. It talks about the ‘delicate balance’ of the Good Friday Agreement, which is something that the UK has been trying to stress in its discussions with the EU — arguing that unionists' objections to the protocol in its current form risk upsetting that. Downing Street, though, would not have wanted so much focus on the protocol today.

Biden proves that Trump was a true British ally

Now that Joe Biden has landed in the UK, many Brits may be realising what a stalwart friend they had in Trump. Within minutes of arriving on UK shores, Biden was denouncing Britannia, Boris, Brexit — you name it. Far from hailing the UK, America’s most cherished ally, BIden was showing Britain a bullying disdain that should be reserved only for China or Iran. It is difficult to conceive of two stranger bedfellows than the golden-tongued Old Etonian and the awkward, plain-spoken 'blue collar' Joe Biden. But rhetoric, style and acuity aside, the two heads of government face divergent motivations when it comes to policy — these are likely to challenge the British-American partnership.

James and Kathryn Murdoch exposed as left-wing mega-donors

From our US edition

It is no secret that James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and his wife Kathryn have supported Democratic causes. But a new report from CNBC reveals that the couple launched a massive spending effort ahead of the 2020 election that rivaled left-wing billionaire George Soros. Data released last spring indicated that James and Kathryn gave $11 million to political causes, including $2.5 million to Democrats. However, they also quietly gave a stunning $100 million to James's nonprofit foundation, Quadrivium, in 2019, a 'large chunk' of which went to political groups. 'The 2019 tax document shows that of the $100 million given to the foundation, over $25 million went toward grants, including for several political causes,' CNBC reported.

James Murdoch and Kathryn murdoch Hufschmid (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Boris, Biden and the orange elephant in the room

Donald who? As Boris Johnson meets Joe Biden in Cornwall this week, the Prime Minister will hope that the President doesn’t dwell on his efforts to woo the last occupant of the Oval Office. Boris’s dalliance with Donald Trump is a bit like his affair with Jennifer Arcuri — an embarrassing fling with a rotund, brash American conspiracy theorist, something he’d rather the world forgot. He’s moved on and so should we.

Will the G7 tax deal survive?

What are the chances of the G7’s agreement on a minimum rate of corporation tax actually coming into effect? While it was presented as a done deal last weekend, things are not going too well. Firstly, the G20 will have to agree — which is far from guaranteed given that smaller countries have less to gain from the proposal than the US. It is a tax designed to help countries with a large number of multinational companies who currently operate through subsidiaries in countries with lower corporation tax rates. While no G20 country currently has a rate below the agreed 15 per cent, (and the biggest loser, Ireland, with its 12.

Joe Biden’s summer vacation

From our US edition

Tomorrow, The Committee will bundle up Joe Biden, titular president of the United States, and take him for a nice ride across the big, big ocean in a very shiny airplane. Weeee! No details have been released yet about what flavors of ice cream he will enjoy, but The Committee’s press arm has been full of stories with titles like 'Three things to watch on Biden's first foreign trip’. This is not a difficult assignment. The big boys and girls who arrange Joe’s play-dates have told all his favorite friends in the media exactly what to say. And just a couple of days ago they surprised Joe with an article in one of his favorite newspapers, the Washington Post. It was just so nice. A couple of the minders got together and wrote the article and then put Joe’s name on it.

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Why should Amazon be exempt from Biden’s global tax?

From our US edition

Donald Trump wasn’t a man for international agreements. Just imagine for a moment, though, that it was him rather than Joe Biden who had just persuaded the G7 to back a minimum global corporation tax rate. Would it be hailed as a great breakthrough for fairness, a sideswipe against amoral global corporations?  Like hell it would. On the contrary, the same deal pulled off by Trump would have been attacked as a charter for the big tax avoiders to carry on as they are — as well as a bullying attempt by the US to divert more tax revenues to its own shores at the expense of smaller countries with competitive tax rates. There are two elements to the agreement reached over the weekend. The first is the proposed minimum tax rate of 15 percent.

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Let the president play on the beach or the golf course

From our US edition

Every president is criticized, sooner or later, for taking too many days off, for lounging around when we’ve hired him to work. Since the media hates Republicans, that criticism is usually directed at them, but even some liberal publications have noticed that — shock! — Democratic presidents play golf, too. That criticism, most recently in Amber Athey’s article in The Spectator, is wrong. It misses the bigger, more important issues — and not just because our country would be well served if most presidents did less, not more. It’s fun to compare the President with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but there are three problems with criticizing presidents for escaping to their beach house in Delaware or their ranch in Texas or California.

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Joe Biden’s long road to recovery

In the middle of last year the US economy was something of a marvel: an economy which was creating jobs at an unprecedented rate, as other economies around the world remained in the deep freeze. Having shed jobs by the million in March, by May it looked as if the jobs market would be back to its pre-Covid position in months. But what has happened? Bureau of Labor figures published today show that once again, job creation for the month of May came in lower than expectations — with an extra 559,000 people on non-farm payrolls. It was better than April, when 278,000 new jobs were created — which was little more than half what many people had expected. Unemployment, at 5.8 per cent, remains far above the 3.5 per cent rate measured in February 2020, just before the pandemic.

Joe Biden’s day off

From our US edition

Joe Biden may be the leader of the free world, but that hasn't stopped him from taking retirement. The President seems to hardly do much of anything, between frequent press lids before 3 p.m., outsourcing the most serious domestic challenge of his presidency to Vice President Kamala Harris and trips nearly every weekend to his home in Delaware (Joe is less confused upon waking when he gets to sleep in his own bed, you see). Occasionally playing hooky is no big deal when you're in a dead-end 9 to 5, but Biden has decided to take a random weekday off being commander-in-chief to celebrate his wife's birthday. The pair flew to their shore home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on Wednesday night and will stay through Thursday.

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A belated check from President Biden

From our US edition

Montpellier, France I got a letter from Joe Biden, which doesn’t happen every day. In the envelope was a check, made out to me, for $1,400. The letter is headed THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON and dated April 22 although it has taken some time to drop into the boîte aux lettres due to the President experiencing confusion over my address. ‘My fellow American,’ he began. Although I am not one I did once work there and paid Social Security contributions, apparently qualifying me for the President’s generosity. ‘I am pleased to inform you,’ he continued, ‘that because of the American rescue plan, a direct payment was issued to you.’ Having attracted attention, Joe, my new best friend, continues. ‘This has been a hard time...brighter days are ahead...

Is Biden’s inflated presidency about to burst?

From our US edition

Is President Joe Biden living up to expectations? It’s hard to say, since the expectations generated on his campaign trail were so murky. Biden made plenty of promises on the stump but only one thing was ever clear: he wasn’t Donald Trump. Beyond that, no one was really certain what iteration of Biden would enter the Oval Office on Inauguration Day. A pragmatic moderate or a progressive ideologue? A return-to-normal steady hand or a malarkey-scourging bomb thrower? The law-and-order author of the PATRIOT Act or the 'Black Lives Matter' anti-racist he suddenly morphed into last summer? Biden was so defined by who he wasn’t that no one ever quite worked out who he was. Now we have our answer. Whatever moderation was once attributed to him has been quickly abandoned.

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Kamala in charge

From our US edition

Who is the head of state? As president, Joe Biden has the sole and unlimited authority to determine US foreign policy. He's flexed this power in pulling troops from Afghanistan and negotiating behind-the-scenes for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Interestingly, though, Vice President Kamala Harris has taken an outsized role in handling much of the administration's diplomacy. Take Friday morning, for example. Harris was the first administration official to greet South Korean president Moon Jae-in on his official working visit to the White House. The pair sat down for a bilateral meeting. The South Korean entourage included the foreign minister and director of national security — but the US side featured no similarly ranked diplomats.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to the media prior to a meeting with Korean President Moon Jae-in (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Biden tells Coast Guard graduates: ‘You’re a really dull class’

From our US edition

President Joe Biden insulted a class of Coast Guard Academy graduates during his commencement address on Wednesday, declaring to the group of cadets that they are 'a really dull class'. The President seemed to get increasingly frustrated throughout his speech as the cadets rarely clapped at his applause lines or laughed at his jokes. He urged them on several occasions to 'stand up' and 'clap', insisting that it was 'okay' to do so, bringing to mind former Florida governor Jeb Bush's infamous plea to his audience to 'please clap.' The lack of enthusiasm came to a head less than 10 minutes into Biden's address.

President Joe Biden addresses Coast Guard Academy graduates (White House Screenshot)

Biden’s bogey

From our US edition

President Joe Biden hit the golf course for the second time since taking office on Sunday, continuing something of an American presidential tradition. Unlike his predecessors, however, Biden appears to be a duffer. It's possible that at one point in time Biden was a decent golfer. He's been a member of Wilmington Country Club in Delaware since 2014 and reportedly had as low as a 6 handicap. That's a bit hard to believe as former president Barack Obama said he had an 'honest 13' handicap after playing 300 rounds of golf. A video of Biden on the links this past weekend further confirms that his golf game has gone the same direction as his mental acuity. The clip shows Biden well to the left of the green behind a short stone wall.

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