Joe biden

In an opinion column for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman proposes that Joe Biden debate Donald Trump only if the President meets two conditions. Trump must release his tax returns and agree to a non-partisan panel of fact-checkers. The fact-checkers, he says, should point out the debaters’ errors in real time and conclude the event by summarizing their findings. Among really bad ideas, this one is a prize-winner. Let us count the reasons why. Trump’s failure to release his tax returns is a legitimate issue to debate, not a precondition for one. Biden is free to raise it on the campaign trail and debate stage, just as Hillary Clinton did. Remember, the voters have already dealt with this issue once.

'While Biden was in his basement, @realDonaldTrump had 5.3 MILLION+ viewers tune in to his rally,' wrote GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel last week. It's a variation on a theme for the Republican party of late: take the vacant airwaves left by a subdued Biden campaign and fill them with spurious claims about the whereabouts of the presumptive Democratic nominee. Sure, Biden has been quiet, relative to Trump — who isn't? — but he hasn't been totally basement-bound. The former vice president has been venturing out for socially distanced local speeches. He gave one on healthcare in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Thursday, stopped off in the Pennsylvania towns of Yeadon and Darby the week before, and hosted an economic round table in Philadelphia on June 11.

When President Obama was in his 75-day transition to the Presidency, he initiated correspondence with Supreme Leader Khamenei of Iran to explore, at the least, some form of what French diplomats call détente, or even entente. But Iran remained an adversary to the United States. Instead of rapprochement, the Shia theocracy  was sanctioned by UN Security Council resolution 1803 on March 3, 2008. As it happens, this was prologue to l’affaire Flynn, a scandal whose events resemble those of that affaire to remember, the notorious Affaire Dreyfus. That’s Alfred Dreyfus the army officer, not Richard Dreyfuss the actor.

In the early hours of May 30, after a night of violent protests in New York, two lawyers were arrested by the NYPD. Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman, Princeton and Fordham graduates respectively, were charged with attempting to firebomb a police vehicle with a Molotov cocktail. Mattis and Rahman are now indicted on seven felony charges for which they could face life in prison. What drove two promising young professionals with top-flight educational credentials to risk everything like this? Gary Saul Morson, an expert on Russian literature at Northwestern University, offered an answer.

It was inevitable that the wave of destructive rioting and looting that has swept through cities that are almost all governed by progressive Democrats, triggered initially by outrage over the sickening death in police custody of George Floyd, would be compared to the American urban riots of earlier generations. But the parallels miss profound differences in the underlying economic and social dynamics. The Detroit and Newark riots of 1967 and the Los Angeles riot of 1992, for example, took place in cities suffering from the effects of deindustrialization. Los Angeles is not often thought of as a major manufacturing center, but Southern California had a flourishing aerospace industry that went into decline following the Cold War.

The final stage of the election campaign and its result will depend on four factors: management of the balance between demand for police reform and concern for the maintenance of public order; whether there is a significant revival of COVID-19; the swiftness of the economic recovery; and the resolution of questions about Joe Biden’s apparent capacity to serve as president. Hovering above the campaign will be the question of indictments from US Attorney John Durham’s special counsel investigation. On all that has been revealed, crimes will be charged, and Attorney General William Barr confirmed last week that those whose conduct is likely to be judged controversial will be 'familiar' names. But they may not include elected officials and apparently not Biden himself.

Move over, Kamala — there’s a new bad sheriff in town. After the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minnesota police officer, Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s prosecutorial record is finally coming under serious scrutiny. While Harris copped a fair share of criticism during the Democratic primary for her stint locking up African Americans, Klobuchar managed to evade a similar onslaught. But now, with Minnesota in flames and her hat in the Veep ring, people are paying attention: in 2006, during her tenure as Hennepin County attorney, Klobuchar failed to criminally charge Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with killing George Floyd.

As we inch closer to the Democratic National Convention in August, the question looms ever larger: who will Joe Biden choose as his running mate? Running mates are usually chosen to inoculate the party’s ticket from a vulnerability. in 2008, for instance, Sen. Biden was the career statesman running mate chosen to cover for Barack Obama’s inexperience. In 2016, Mike Pence was the evangelical bonafide Republican picked to help Donald Trump the outsider. Biden’s team knows he must pick someone who will act as a human shield against his biggest issue: women.

Democratic strategist Joel Payne was left ‘embarrassed’ after insinuating on TV that black Trump supporters were merely stock models paid to pose in pro-Trump t-shirts. His remarks followed former vice president Joe Biden’s claim that, if you are having a hard time deciding whether to vote for him or President Trump, then ‘you ain’t black’. Payne was the latest Biden defender to put his foot in his mouth by erasing black Trump supporters, chuckling during a CBS News interview that two black people shown wearing the Trump campaign’s new ‘you ain’t black’ t-shirts were probably just paid models. ‘Those two models you showed wearing those shirts...I wonder if they’d actually vote for Donald Trump.

President Trump gets away with a lot because much of the world thinks he’s a buffoon. Former vice president Joe Biden gets away with a lot because much of the world thinks he’s demented. Welcome to American politics in 2020. Trump may or may not be a buffoon; Biden may or may not be senile — there’s been perhaps too much speculation about his mental health. What is certain is that he gives the strong impression of being a doddery old codger. Perversely, in what Gore Vidal called the United States of Amnesia, that could be the key to his success. You can’t really blame a man who has lost his mind. He can’t be that bad, after all, if he doesn’t know what he is doing.

‘You don’t run for second place.’ That’s how Stacey Abrams responded when asked if she would consider being presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s running mate during a March 2019 interview on ABC’s The View. Annoyed at the posed hypothetical, the 2018 Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate’s answer lacked a basic understanding of her place in the Democratic party. But now, a short year later, Abrams is making it abundantly clear to anyone who is willing to listen: she is absolutely, passionately and gracelessly running for second place, so help her God.

Without a doubt, women who level sexual assault allegations against powerful men are often subjected to character assassination and smears.However, evaluating the credibility of a person who alleges that a presidential candidate committed a grievous act of criminal violence is not the same as ‘smearing’ that person.I’m not interested in smearing Tara Reade, who claims to have been raped by Joe Biden. For one thing, I have no particular affinity for Biden. You can go check my archive at The Spectator and elsewhere for numerous examples of articles in which I harshly criticize Biden, especially for his own pattern of deception as it relates to the circumstances of his 2002 Iraq War vote.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell has dropped a massive bombshell in the counter-investigation on Russiagate. In a document obtained by CBS News's Catherine Herridge, Grenell revealed that Obama administration officials sought to 'unmask' Gen. Michael Flynn 48 times after Trump was elected president. Those officials include, among others, Vice President Joe Biden, former UN ambassador Samantha Power, DNI James Clapper, CIA director John Brennan, FBI director James Comey, and President Obama's chief of staff Denis McDonough. Why is this important? Unmasking isn't illegal — officials with the proper clearance can request the identities of Americans whose conversations are incidentally collected during foreign surveillance.

Late last December, Democrats were heading into the homestretch of their presidential primary optimistic that although they faced an internal battle about their party's position on healthcare, they could easily outrun President Trump on the issue. Healthcare proved to be a winning issue during the 2018 midterms when Democrats took back the House, catching Republicans flat-footed on a policy issue they had failed to present a new, cohesive idea on since 'repeal and replace Obamacare'. Democrats hoped they could replicate this success in 2020, as Trump repeatedly floated the possibility of a new Republican plan on healthcare but had yet to actually unveil one. The strategy seemed good on its face; healthcare was constantly polled as the top issue for voters in late 2019 and early 2020.