[Salon] Biden’s parting deluge of deceit deserves damning

[Jim Bovard <jbovard@his.com>]

https://mises.org/mises-wire/bidens-parting-deluge-deceit-deserves-damning

Biden’s parting deluge of deceit deserves damning

by James Bovard, July 25, 2024  Mises Institute 

In a mere 11 minutes on Wednesday night, President Biden settled any doubts about whether he was fit for another four years of the presidency. Uncle Joe wrestled with the teleprompter like a slacker high school boy blindsided by trigonometry questions on the math SAT test. By the end of the Bidens brief spiel, most judges declared that the teleprompter had won by technical knockout.

A few weeks ago, Biden declared that it would take “the Lord Almighty” to get him to end his re-election campaign. Did the Lord make an unannounced visit to Biden’s Delaware vacation home?

When Biden threw in the towel on Wednesday night, everything was sacred - including the Oval Office (“this sacred space”), “the sacred cause of this country,” “the “sacred task of perfecting our Union,” and the “sacred idea” of America. Biden announced that “I revere this office” - a hint that viewers should revere him, too. Biden has worshiped political power his entire life - and so it was no surprise that religiosity suffused his valedictory address.

Biden asked: “Does character in public life still matter?” That signals that the coverups of his abuses and potential kickbacks will continue at least until January. No wonder Hunter Biden had a big smile as he sat just outside of the video sweep in the Oval Office. But will Biden finally permit his Attorney General Merrick Garland to release the audiotape of Biden’s bumbling interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur? Or is official Washington obliged to continue pretending that Biden has not been mentally AWOL for years?

Biden declared Wednesday night: “Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy.” This was bad news for voters. So Democratic Party bosses had no choice but to nullify 15 million primary ballots cast for Biden and jam a replacement candidate down the nation’s throat. For years, the Democratic Party has equated Trump with saving democracy, justifying any tactic - fair or foul - to thwart Trump. Sending in the FBI to raid and potentially shoot people at Trump’s Florida home? Check. Ginning up bogus criminal charges to get Trump locked way from voters? Check. Using the FBI and other federal agencies to target anyone who is too enthusiastic on MAGA? Check.

There is no freedom or constitutional right that Team Biden would not destroy in the name of saving democracy. But barely a hundred days from the election, Biden got “Julius-Caesared” – knifed in the back - by his own party.

Biden exited as he entered, with a deluge of deceit. Biden reminded viewers of his “promise to always level with you, to tell you the truth.” Is Biden’s biggest lie his boast about always being honest with the American people? His falsehoods have been perpetually burnished with a sham idealism.

For at least 15 years, Biden has relied on a two-step routine - ruthlessly vilifying his opponents and then appealing to “our better angels,” a phrase recycled from Lincoln’s first inaugural address. Biden seeks to lull listeners into assuming that he is personally one of those “better angels” as he flails anyone in the way of his latest power grab or Democratic Party victories. From portraying any Republican who wanted to cut domestic spending as a “terrorist” in 2011, to claiming that Mitt Romney wanted to put black people back “in chains” in the 2012 presidential campaign, to endlessly misrepresenting the 2017 violence at a Charlottesville protest, Biden out-Nixoned Nixon while his media allies perpetually burnished his “nice guy” image.

Par for the course, it is difficult to tell when Biden is venal or when he is merely clueless. Biden boasted again about appointing the first black female Supreme Court Justice. But why should be proud of a lifetime judicial appointment for a lady who openly fretted in a court hearing about the First Amendment “hamstringing” federal censorship schemes? The media has sainted Biden on civil rights despite his championing crime legislation in the Senate that vastly increased the number of black and Hispanic citizens sent to prison. In a 2019 piece headlined “Joe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration,” the New York Times hyped Biden’s favorite fix: “Lock the S.O.B.s up!”

Implicitly wagging a finger at Donald Trump, Biden declared that “presidents are not kings.” But how do we reconcile that with his endless boasting about how he scorns the Supreme Court ruling nullifying his illegal decrees abolishing federal student loan debt? Perhaps the media, grateful to Biden for abandoning his campaign, will resume pretending that he is the reincarnation of George Washington, a faultless president and the ultimate role model…

Biden promised that in his final months in office, “I’ll keep defending our personal freedoms and our civil rights.” This was shortly after he announced that he was supporting “Supreme Court reform” - i.e., adding new justices so that the court will no longer even attempt to curtail presidential demolitions of the Constitution. Maybe Biden and other Democrats can find enough judges to formally proclaim that presidents are sacred entities