Biden Speech in Poland Falls Flat and the WH Has to Scramble to Clean Things Up

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

They sent Joe Biden to Poland hoping, I think, to try to make him into a wartime president, to draft off the Zelensky effect, and save his polls (that are in the basement) before the midterms.

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On Saturday, they had Biden give a speech that was supposed to harken back to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in standing up to the Soviet Union. This was how they were pitching it.

Now, I don’t know whether this was supposed to be a joke or just Joe Biden being Joe Biden and his mind going again, but he told them to be seated, but there were no seats. Not the speech for a joke.

Biden quoted Pope John Paul II and how he stood up against the Soviet Union. “Be not afraid,” he said quoting John Paul. He spat angry words about Putin, and he did warn him not to move into Poland. But he said nothing new. It was like a simulation of a meaningful speech, without the real weight behind it.

Part of the problem was that Joe Biden is neither Reagan nor JFK, he’s not standing near the Berlin Wall. He didn’t have the skill to deliver what they wanted him to deliver.

But the other problem behind it was that it left out some key things that animated their fight against the Soviet Union’s oppression. Biden compared the fight against the Soviet Union to the fight today with Russia and Vladimir Putin and termed them both autocracies. But there was a big word he left out, a word he seemed to refuse to say, a word that animated that fight for decades — that’s Communism. We were in a huge battle for the free world against Communism. We were fighting its spread around the world — that that was a huge factor in John Paul’s thought and the thought of the Polish people. But Biden can’t even say the word or be honest about it.

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I suspect there’s a big reason he left it out. It’s because now we are fighting that battle at home against the radical left and he is helping that cause with a lot of his actions. That wouldn’t fit the narrative he’s trying to sell now with the comparison he’s trying to make. It also would antagonize the folks on the left.

Biden also spoke about fossil fuels and reducing Europe’s reliance upon Russia, and made the greater (crazy point) about moving away from fossil fuels.

Yet, by lifting the sanctions on Nord Stream 2 back in May of last year, Biden did the opposite and hurt Ukraine in the process. Unlike President Donald Trump, who spoke out against that reliance — warning what it could lead to — Biden seems only to be coming to this realization now, after Russia has invaded Ukraine yet again. He also leaves out who we would be dependent on for those materials needed for our electric vehicles. China has a big hold on lithium that’s important, for example. So if you’re trying to talk about “independence,” be honest. Also, be honest about how his policies have adversely affected our energy prices and don’t just blame Vladimir Putin. This isn’t going to go over well with Americans.

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Finally, Biden made an interesting sound bite that a lot of the media is pushing, likely thinking it sounded tough.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said, regarding Putin. Probably it will go past most of the media, but is he advocating regime change? We’ve already seen him say a bunch of problematic and/or conflicting things during his time overseas, including that sanctions don’t deter and seeming to indicate that troops might be going to Ukraine. The White House had to clean up that latter statement.

So is this just a random comment/appeal? Or is this a policy that he’s acting on in some fashion? Of course, with Biden, he says so many random things, it’s hard to know but this appeared to be a purposeful inclusion, so what are they trying to say with it? He now has also handed Putin a propaganda point that he can use with his people, saying they’re trying to get rid of me.

The White House is once again having to scramble to clarify what he meant in a scripted speech.

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Of course, that isn’t what he said.

The United States is the leader of the free world because we’ve fought for freedom and stood against oppression. We showed that with someone like Reagan and his work with John Paul II, which helped to free the world. But that requires clarity of purpose and thought. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the clarity of purpose or thought at the top at the moment.

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