Doesn’t Joe Biden know there’s a war on? Of course, he does — he just doesn’t know where.
That was the takeaway from a Biden blunder on Wednesday when the commander in chief of the American armed forces was asked if last week’s mutiny by a mercenary force had weakened Russian President Vladimir Putin.
For Americans who care about the country, the answer was infuriating.
“Absolutely,” Biden said.
He should have stopped there, because when he was asked to elaborate, things got embarrassing.
“It’s hard to tell, but he’s clearly losing the war in Iraq,” Biden said — wrongly placing a war that’s been raging in Eastern Europe for more than a year into a country in the Middle East that was actually where his own United States military was the most recent combatant.
“He’s losing the war at home. And he is, uh, becoming a bit of a pariah around the world. And it’s not just NATO, it’s not just the European Union. It’s Japan,” he said.
Check it out here:
Biden: “[Putin] is clearly losing the war in Iraq” pic.twitter.com/dKt6yWWGFx
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 28, 2023
What’s unnerving here wasn’t just that Biden said “Iraq” when he was talking about Ukraine — two countries have received billions in aid from the U.S. A slip of the tongue can happen (though they happen to Biden more often the most Americans would like).
What’s really a problem is that he didn’t correct himself — clearly unaware that he’d gotten the most basic fact wrong about an international conflict that’s been dominating the news (and presumably White House discussions) since February 2022.
Does he even hear what he’s saying? Or is it just one more sign that the 80-year-old president, who has been showing signs of physical and mental decline for years, is too far into his dotage for the demands of one of the most demanding jobs on earth?
For many social media users, the answer was obvious:
“Old age is showing.”
Old age is showing, memory.
— Eddie, USN (Ret) (@eoverfelt) June 28, 2023
Naturally, there was plenty of brutal, barbed joking.
Next he’ll be demanding that Putin needs to take his troops out of Denmark.
— Adam B. Coleman, President of Aintblackistan (@wrong_speak) June 28, 2023
Iraq, Ukraine – what’s he diff?
— Curtice Mang (@Curtice_Mang) June 28, 2023
Well, that’s some good news
— Friction Polish (@FrictionPolish) June 28, 2023
Sure am glad the President has a firm grasp on what is happening in the world.
— Mark Temons (@MTemons) June 28, 2023
But it’s at a point where it’s not even joking material anymore.
Biden has spent decades in Washington as basically the personification of the “often wrong, never in doubt” school of politics known as the Democratic Party. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his memoir, Biden has been wrong about every foreign policy issue for more than 40 years. It’s important to remember that Gates started serving as defense secretary under Republican President George W. Bush in 2006 through the first term of the Obama-Biden administration. He knows Joe Biden.
For the vast majority of his career, Biden was a senator — one of 100 other egotistical voices in an egotistical chamber — or the number No. 2 in an administration, supposedly a partner of the president but a No. 2 man nonetheless.
Now as president, under the Constitution, he’s the final decision-maker when it comes to American foreign and it gets more and more obvious with every one of these gaffes that he’s not even close to up to the job.
And that means every American is vulnerable to the fallout that will come from Biden’s warped or misguided decision — and so are our allies (as they learned in Afghanistan two years ago).
What might be even more infuriating, though, is the seemingly instinctive cloak of protection that got thrown around Biden by the supposedly independent establishment media.
As Twitchy noted, some “journalists” left the mistake out of their coverage entirely.
CNN, remarkably enough, included the quote — but with an oh-so-gentle clarification.
“It’s hard to tell but he’s clearly losing the war,” Biden told reporters on the White House South Lawn, mistakenly referring to the war in Iraq instead of Ukraine.”
Does any serious American think a slip by former President Donald Trump would be handled like that — either by establishment media ignoring it entirely, or explaining it?
(Here’s a hint, when Trump made a similar mistake, confusing Iraq with Syria during an interview with Fox Business News’ Maria Bartiromo in 2017, CNN headlined its video: “Trump misspeaks, says US bombed Iraq” — with a picture of a shrugging Trump apparently unconcerned with the truth. These are men and women who call themselves “journalists.”)
Between a president who is either unable to recognize the reality of the world, national law enforcement and intelligence agencies that are at least as determined to keep Americans in line as it is in keeping foreign threats at bay and an establishment media culture that coddles the powerful, conservatives have every reason — and right — to be infuriated with the status of the country under the Biden presidency.
All Americans who care about the country do.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
