When President Joe Biden got a chance to argue his re-election case Sunday night, he made the best argument for why he should never have been elected in the first place.
Because apparently, his goal for a second term is to make the country as good as it was when Donald Trump was in the White House.
That was the unspoken message from the closing moments of Biden’s “60 Minutes” interview broadcast that aired Sunday night — but it came through loud and clear.
In the interview — in which the soft-spoken Scott Pelley tossed softballs to the soft-headed president, judging by the transcript — Biden got a pass on any question about how his appeasement policies on Iran might have encouraged the Hamas terror attack on Israel that’s opened up a new war in the Middle East.
(There’s “no clear evidence” Iran played a role, Biden claimed.)
He got to take free shots at Republicans — who apparently don’t believe in democracy — while not a word was mentioned about the insane left of his own party, where even condemning the decapitation of babies is a struggle.
He was allowed to blabber about the war in Ukraine, without questioning his own role in encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to think he could get away with the invasion or addressing the toll that U.S. support for Ukraine is taking on his own country’s military readiness. (Even CNN has reported that the munitions the U.S. is supplying Ukraine are leaving American military forces near a danger zone when it comes to resupply.)
And then he got pitched the grand-daddy of softball questions, and struck out badly.
“Are you sure that you want to run again?”
Biden says yes because he thinks he’ll achieve world peace. He does not mention the American people. pic.twitter.com/huxKVjXaPK
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 15, 2023
“Mr. President, given these two wars and the dysfunction in Congress, are you sure that you want to run again?” Pelley asked, according to the transcript.
The answer wasn’t exactly reassuring for Biden’s fans.
“Yes, because I’m sure …” There was a suspicious change in the camera angle there, giving the very strong impression that CBS producers were covering for the fact that the president needed time to gather his thoughts.
“Look, when I ran, I said, ‘The world’s at an inflection point,'” Biden said.
“The world’s changing, but we have an opportunity to make it — so, imagine if we were able to succeed in getting the Middle East put in place where we have normalization of relations. I think we can do that. Imagine what happens if we, in fact, unite all of Europe and Putin is finally put down where he cannot cause the kind of trouble he’s been causing. We have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make it a better world.”
Actually, that world sounds a lot like the world Trump had achieved before Biden darkened the Oval Office in 2021. Biden might as well have promised to restore order and security to the southern border, free up American energy production, get the economy humming and have a gorgeous former model as his first lady.
Everything Biden says he wants to accomplish by running again — stabilizing the Middle East, uniting Europe, deterring Putin — was already done when he came into office, thanks to President Trump.
Biden’s policies and weakness ruined it all. pic.twitter.com/Qi4G13JMAP
— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) October 16, 2023
This is actually hilarious – you’re right, he’s bringing up things that were already solved before he came along. Haha. This is fabulous ad fodder.
— Moss Man (@TheMossMan) October 16, 2023
Remember Democrats create an issue then try to fix that issue all while patting themselves on the back
— losphorwords (@losphorwords) October 16, 2023
It was the Abraham Accords achieved under Trump’s watch that showed the first signs of “normalization” of relations in the Middle East since the Israel-Egypt peace agreement in 1979.
Four Arab nations — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — had established diplomatic relations with the Jewish state by the end of Trump’s term.
An Israeli rapprochement with Saudi Arabia appeared possible, and the Palestinian question’s long domination of Middle East politics appeared to have receded.
With Biden’s accession to power, his administration’s determination to undo all things Trump has led the U.S. into appeasement with Iran — the world’s chief state sponsor of terrorism and, according to The Wall Street Journal, the power behind the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
[ic_related]
(Biden’s “no clear evidence” line was clearly a craven fudge. Admitting Iran’s role in the atrocity would require him to do something about it.)
When Donald Trump was the president, Russia didn’t invade Ukraine. And it’s impossible to imagine Trump essentially greenlighting the invasion the way Biden did.
In other words, it’s not “Europe,” united or otherwise, that keeps dictators like Vladimir Putin in line. It’s a strong American presidency — the kind that keeps order in the world without having to keep order.
It’s an axiom of conservative belief that the United States is not responsible for the behavior of other countries, and it’s not responsible for guaranteeing the peace of the world. Only God can do that.
But it’s also simply a matter of reality that the world’s only superpower dictates the behavior of other countries the way a planet dictates the behavior of the moons around it. And it’s another matter of reality that nature abhors a vacuum.
A world in which the United States is led by a doddering, almost certainly corrupt octagenarian whose moral compass has failed badly (if he ever had one) is a world where a power vacuum is being filled by the worst players on the international scene. It’s regression on all fronts.
By contrast, the world that was a-building under Donald Trump had a Middle East that was showing clear signs of progress. It was a world where Europe was at peace. And, amazingly enough, more than 1,000 Jews weren’t slaughtered in a day in the worst single anti-Semitic atrocity since the Holocaust.
If China was growing increasingly bellicose, at least it knew there was an American president in charge who was willing to confront it. (Most Americans have already forgotten how easily a Chinese spy balloon violated American airspace and spent a leisurely week overfly the country’s heartland. It’s a rock-solid bet that the hard men in Beijing haven’t forgotten at all.)
Biden didn’t give an argument for his own re-election on Sunday night. He gave an argument for why he should never have been elected in the first place.
Americans need to remember that in 2024.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
