The Trip To Ireland

The coronation of King Charles III will be held at Westminster Abbey on May 6. President Biden will not be in attendance. American Presidents generally send a delegation to the coronation rather than personally attending, so there is nothing unusual here. The First Lady will likely lead the delegation.

However, some of the press doesn’t see it that way.

On Wednesday, The U.K. Telegraph posted the headline, “Joe Biden has gravely insulted Britain.” The subtitle read, “The US President thinks nothing of lecturing the government on Northern Ireland policy, and has shown contempt for the Special Relationship.”

On Thursday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog quoted the Telegraph article:

President Biden’s insulting decision to prioritise Ireland over the UK on his visit to mark the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement should have come as no surprise. It is just as unsurprising as his decision to skip the coronation of King Charles III. Biden, like Barack Obama before him, has shown nothing but contempt for Great Britain and the Special Relationship.

Biden began his presidency in 2021 by removing a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. …

Biden’s insult towards Churchill and his memory set the tone for his presidency. His approach towards Britain, traditionally America’s closest friend and ally, has been sneering, arrogant and disrespectful. With deep roots in Ireland, Biden’s track record as a US Senator and Washington politician for half a century has been one of unyielding support for the Irish Republican cause. As recently as 2017 he was photographed with Gerry Adams and erstwhile IRA fugitive Rita O’Hare.

Biden’s missteps are not a surprise. Robert Gates, the former defense secretary, once remarked that President Biden has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

It wasn’t necessary for President Biden to attend the coronation, but visiting Ireland just weeks before and skipping the coronation is tone-deaf.

Shouldn’t We Be Alarmed At This?

On Thursday American Greatness posted an article about a recent statement by President Biden about Israel’s Six-Day War.

The article reports:

Either Joe Biden’s faulty memory or his lifelong habit of padding his resume was on display Wednesday during a menorah lighting at the White House in celebration of Hanukkah.

During his remarks before the lighting, Biden bragged about “the many times” he’d been to Israel, and then decided to alter history and insert himself as an important player in the Six-Day War.

“I have known every — every prime minister well since Golda Meir, including Golda Meir,” Biden said to applause. “And during the Six-Day War, I had an opportunity to — she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez, and so on and so forth.”

This would be an impressive story, except Meir wasn’t Israel’s prime minister during the Six Day War of 1967 (she was PM from March 17, 1969 to June 3, 1974), and Biden was still in law school at the time, (where he ranked a dismal 76th in his class of 85).

Golda Meir became Prime Minister in 1969. Levi Eshkol was Prime Minister from 1963 to 1969.

The article at American Greatness quotes a National Review article from December 2 of this year.

The National Review article reports:

Biden did indeed meet Golda Meir in 1973 — six years after the Six Day War — but that is . . . not how the Israelis remember that meeting, at least according to a contemporaneous classified Israeli memo from that time:

Biden warned that Israel’s actions in the territories it had captured during the Six Day War, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were leading to “creeping annexation.”

Since he believed Israel was militarily dominant in the region, he suggested the Jewish state might initiate a first step for peace through unilateral withdrawals from areas with no strategic importance.

The official said Biden criticized the Nixon administration for being “dragged by Israel,” complaining that it was impossible to have a real debate in the Senate about the Middle East as senators were fearful of saying things unpopular with Jewish voters.

Meir rejected Biden’s call for unilateral steps, launching into a speech about the region and its problems (possibly the spiel Biden alluded to in his own comments years later).

The official added his own personal impressions regarding the young senator at the bottom of the document, saying Biden was full of respect toward the Israeli leader and repeatedly said he had come to learn, “and yet while speaking displayed a fervor and made comments that signaled his lack of diplomatic experience.”

In August 2021, The Washington Times reported:

You have to give President Biden credit for consistency. Unfortunately, he has been consistently wrong. As Robert Gates, former defense secretary in the Obama administration, once put it, Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Unfortunately President Biden is the person currently leading our country.

The Networks Have Totally Lost Their Credibility

Newsbusters posted an article today about an interview to be aired on ABC during prime time on Sunday.

The article reports:

On June 15, former National Security Adviser John Bolton sat down for an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz to promote his new “tell all” book, expected to rip the bark off the Trump White House. ABC is airing it Sunday during prime time….just like they aired a prime time interview in 2018 with former FBI director James Comey to promote his anti-Trump “tell all” book.

In 2007, Bolton wrote a book about his experience in government. No major network came calling for a prime time special. He wasn’t useful to them back then.

Now try to remember ABC offering a prime time special to an Obama insider who wrote a rip-roaring “tell-all” book. You’ll have a tough time. Because most publishers are liberals, and aren’t going to roll out the red carpet for that kind of book….even if the author is a liberal. So there was no insider “tell-all” for ABC to promote.

The article notes that there were never any prime time interviews for authors of tell-all books about the Obama administration.

The article continues:

To be fair, there were former Obama officials who came out with memoirs that may have said something negative about Obama…and they were attacked for it.

In 2014, Robert Gates, Obama’s first Secretary of Defense, was selling a book. As he sat in NBC’s studio wearing a neck brace, Today co-host Matt Lauer accused him of endangering the troops for having the audacity to criticize the sitting commander-in-chief: “[A]t a time when some 40,000 U.S. troops are in harm’s way, do you think that by calling him into question at this stage it is either dangerous or dishonorable?”

Now look back and imagine being called “dishonorable” by Matt Lauer.  

In 2013, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, fired by President Obama over critical comments from his staff in a Rolling Stone article, issued his memoirs, and did a round of TV interviews. The first one, with CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin, mostly skipped Obama, except for McChrystal to express pain over his apparent “disloyalty” with Rolling Stone. There wasn’t any attack on Obama. The general did promote his book on a special edition of Hannity in prime time, and the Fox host talked through what happened with Obama, but there was no trashing of the president.

This same pattern emerged last September with Gen. James Mattis. CBS promoted his book in two interviews, but completely ignored his strong criticisms of Obama. He even called some of his choices “catastrophic.”

Instead, CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason asked about Trump: “What do you think the President got wrong about Syria?” Guest host Maria Elena Salinas pushed about his resignation: “Was it your decision to leave, or were you fired, or were you pushed into resigning or pressured into resigning?”

The article concludes:

There’s no need to pre-judge what John Bolton will say to ABC. But we can judge a long history of “tell all” imbalance, from the publishing houses to the TV studios. Republicans are mercilessly dissected. Democrats are carefully protected.

ABC is not noted for presenting both sides of the story. How much of the Comey interview was proven to be lies after documents were declassified? Those who claim to want to bring the country together (and accuse President Trump of dividing it) would do well to begin by reporting both sides of every story and letting the American people discern the truth.

A Common Misconception

Many of my liberal friends and relatives (yes, I do have some of those) on Facebook have been posting claims that the reason we are having problems with the coronavirus is because President Trump dissolved the office at the White House responsible for disaster preparedness. It’s an odd claim, and I wondered when I heard it what it was based on–all fake news is based on part of a story–just not always the part that is true.

Today Paul Mirengoff at Power Line Blog posted an article explaining exactly what was done.

The article explains:

But according to Tim Morrison, the former aide to whom direction of this office was assigned, the office was not “dissolved.” It remains in operation under Morrison’s successor.

Writing in the Washington Post, Morrison states:

When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was ultimately defeated in 2020.

It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, congressional oversight committees and members of the Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused. . . .

The reduction of force in the NSC has continued since I departed the White House. But it has left the biodefense staff unaffected — perhaps a recognition of the importance of that mission to the president, who, after all, in 2018 issued a presidential memorandum to finally create real accountability in the federal government’s expansive biodefense system.

(emphasis (underline) added in Power Line article)

The article at Power Line Blog continues:

As part of the effort to make the NSC more effective, the Trump administration created the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, a consolidation of three directorates into one (the three were arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense, which obviously overlap). Morrison says “it is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented.” (Emphasis added) But, “if anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled.”

The article concludes:

Morrison, then, is not an apologist for Trump. He’s an ally of Bolton, his boss at the NSC whom Trump has attacked. Reportedly Morrison has been called “Bolton without a mustache.”

Morrison concedes that some of the criticism of the president’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is “warranted,” though “much [is] not.” (The odds are strongly against any leader not making mistakes in responding to something as unprecedented as this pandemic.) But the claim that Trump dissolved the pandemic response office isn’t just unwarranted. It is fake news.

As you can see, the claims being made by the political left and their allies are simply not true. They are simply another attempt to turn the country over in November to one of two grumpy old men who will undo what progress has been made in shrinking government and bringing manufacturing back to America.

One Reason Hillary’s Email Server Matters

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about an interview Hugh Hewitt did with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. If you have wondered why Hillary Clinton’s private server is such a big deal, this might explain it.

The article reports:

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says, “I think the odds are pretty high” countries like Iran, China, and Russia hacked Hillary Clinton’s email server.

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, the former CIA director said “the Pentagon acknowledges that they get attacked about 100,000 times a day.”
(RELATED: Obama’s Former Defense Sec: Obama ‘Has Centralized Power’ In An ‘Unparalleled’ Way [VIDEO])

Hewitt asked Gates, “[A]re you surprised by the news that continues to come out about the former Secretary of State’s server and the fact that the intelligence community’s inspector general has said there was a lot of very highly classified information on her server?”

“Yeah, that’s a concern for me,” Gates said. “I never used email when I was head of CIA or head of the Department of Defense. As I used to joke, I didn’t want to have some chief of station overseas email me and say he was going to do something if I didn’t get back to him in three hours, and I would get back from a five hour hearing to discover I was two hours too late.

The information on Hilllary Clinton’s server was at a level that a leak would have put intelligence gathering methods and people at risk. Having a private server was foolish at best and dishonest at worst. The goal was probably to protect herself from those pesky Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests which might have revealed some of the monetary deals made while she was Secretary of State. Instead, she put the safety of Americans at risk to hide her dishonesty. She is not the kind of person we want as President.

When Politics Is More Important Than National Security

Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a story about the problem with security leaks in the Obama Administration. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, there were a number of details about the operation leaked that put members of our armed forces in danger. Then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke out about the dangers of these leaks at Camp Lejeune in May 2011.

Some of Secretary Gates’ statement is posted on YouTube:

Speaking to Marines at Camp Lejeune on Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed concern over the safety of the Navy SEALs who killed Al Qaeda chief, Osama Bin Laden. The threat of retaliation against the elite and classified SEAL squadron – SEAL team 6 – has increased after operational details were leaked to the press by the Obama administration.

A helicopter crashed in Afghanistan in August 2011, killing 30 Americans, most of them belonging to SEAL team 6. We have no way of knowing whether the helicopter was attacked because the enemy knew who was on board.

The article at the Daily Caller reports:

Unfortunately, the Bin Laden leaks have not turned out to be isolated incidents. In early May, after the disruption of a terrorist plot in Yemen, reports surfaced concerning the reported role of British intelligence in the operation. This leak was especially serious in that it risked the trust caveat that underpins America’s most important (but increasingly sensitive) intelligence relationship.
 
There have been two more sensitive leaks recently. The first is the leaking of the President’s strategy for dealing with terrorists. Why in the world would you release your strategy for winning a war to the enemy while the war is still going on? The second story had to do with the role America played in the recent cyber attacks on Iran. The Obama Administration needs to learn how to be quiet. This will only invite major retaliation from the people impacted by the attack.
 
The Daily Caller concludes:
 
Faced with these leaks, we should demand two things from the government. First, classified material must be restricted to those officials who need it. The president should make clear to his political appointees that the unauthorized disclosure of this material is absolutely unacceptable. There must not be a divided approach where government workers are punished for leaks, while appointees feel free to disclose restricted information as they please. Second, where leaks do take place, the Justice Department must conduct investigations to identify those responsible and pursue punishment against them. These two steps would bring some rational purpose back to the way in which intelligence material is handled in Washington.

In the space of just over a week, Obama administration officials have leaked significant elements of two critical national security endeavors. In disclosing this information, the officials responsible have asserted Obama’s re-election in precedence to the demands of national security. This is a disgrace that must not be allowed to continue.

I understand that this is an election year, but that is no excuse for risking American national security in the campaign.

 
 

 

 

 
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