As we face disaster after disaster in just the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, it’s a good time to remember the anti-woke liberals who disdained Donald Trump and praised Joe Biden as moderate, “decent” ‘ol Uncle Joe from Scranton. That view of Biden was always ridiculous. But amid today’s roiling war and inflation, the disaster that is the Biden presidency now renders such a foolish judgment obscene.
These folks likely will never recant their view that Trump is horrid. Fine. But will they now admit that Biden is horrid as well? If they don’t, they don’t deserve to be taken seriously.
It’s questionable whether they deserve to be taken seriously either way, as the case for Biden’s awfulness before his presidency was manifest. He was always a venal, mendacious, and fraudulent mediocrity.
He lied about his academic record. He publicly slimed and slandered Clarence Thomas, Janice Rogers Brown, and Miguel Estrada. He was a plagiarist. He was wrong about every foreign policy matter in the last 50 years. He said Mitt Romney would put black citizens “back in chains.” He has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct.
Unlike Trump, who focused his fire on his rich or powerful opponents, Biden rails against the little guys who dare to challenge him by calling them “fat” and insisting “you ain’t black.” His corrupt international financial dealings—“ten percent for the big guy” and “son of a b-tch that prosecutor was fired”—are beyond reasonable dispute.
Perhaps the wickedest Bidenism known for certain before the election was how Biden lied, frequently and with abandon, about the tragic car accident that killed his wife and child. Biden claimed repeatedly that the other driver was drunk. That was a vicious lie, as the police report made clear. Indeed, the police record indicates Mrs. Biden was at fault in the accident.
The driver and his family pleaded with Biden to correct the record. He didn’t for years. His refusal means the poor man went to his grave burdened with the calumny that his drunkenness had caused the accident. That is profoundly evil. Joe Biden did that.
All of this was known at the time of the 2020 election. But some Very Good Liberals put their fingers in their ears and their hands over their eyes and ignored all this evidence. They did not only hold their noses to vote for Biden. They went out of their way to praise him.
These are the liberals who publicly go aghast at woke nonsense, critical race theory, and transgender extremism, people like Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss, and Bill Maher.
There is no better example than Sullivan. In an August 19, 2019 New York Magazine article roasting Trump, Sullivan opined: “I don’t think Biden’s age matters much.” Despite the very public Biden character problems recounted above, Sullivan embarrassingly gushed about Biden: “[D]ecency is the heart of his candidacy. And voting for Joe Biden feels like voting for some things we’ve lost and have one last chance to regain. Normalcy, generosity, civility, experience.”
That was absurd, but perhaps it served a psychological need at the time to draw a Manichean contrast between the two candidates. Still, it would be delusional to maintain that position today. Does Sullivan still think Biden’s age does not “matter much” and that he represents “decency, normalcy, generosity, civility, experience”?
Similarly, Weiss, formerly of The New York Times and now at Substack, wrote on January 22, 2021 that “Biden is an eminently decent and kind man. That fact that his decency seems positively refreshing is a tragic sign of where we are.” Decent? Kind? Does Weiss still believe that?
And then there’s Maher. As late as April 23, 2021, Maher on his “Real Time” show praised Biden, unironically, as “completely on top of things.” Maher gushed that Biden was “focused and sharp” and “getting things done” on racial injustice, income inequality, Afghanistan (!), and climate change.
Maher has recently criticized Biden. But has he ever recanted his statement that was ludicrous when uttered, and is even more so now, that Biden is “completely on top of things?”
These obvious flaws in political judgment pale in comparison to those of 70 “Former Republican National Security Advisors for Biden.” “Serious people” like Richard Burt, Clyde Prestowitz, Winston Lord, William Webster, John Warner, Chuck Hagel, Carla Hills, John Negroponte, and Richard Armitage opined that Trump was a clear and present danger.
By contrast, they wrote “Joe Biden has the character, experience and temperament to lead this nation. We believe he will restore the dignity of the presidency, bring Americans, together, reassert America’s role as a global leader, and inspire our nation to live up to its ideals.”
Again, this was absurd when written. Now it seems downright Orwellian. Have any of these “experts” apologized or recanted in any way? On the contrary: that statement remains active to this very day at defendingdemocracytogether.org.
One notable exception is podcaster Sam Harris. On July 21, 2020, Harris tweeted “[t]here’s almost nothing Biden could be guilty of that would disqualify him in an election against Trump.” In an infamous January 20, 2021 tweet, Harris shared with the world his “overwhelming gratitude for the adults in the room.” To his credit, in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle, Harris admitted he was wrong: “Publicly eating these words . . . syllable by syllable.”
It is now March 2022, and the case for “eating words” of praise for Biden’s decency and competence has grown stronger with each roiling disaster, be it Covid lies and lockdowns, soaring gas prices and inflation, the border crisis, or war. But we have yet to see the Andrew Sullivans, Bill Mahers, Bari Weisses, and esteemed “Republican National Security Advisors” man up and apologize.
Come on, Andrew. Let’s hear it, Bari, Go for it, Bill. How about you, Dick Armitage? We’re waiting.
