The Biden White House has a serious problem with establishing priorities. During two recent incidents that impacted the lives of Americans, President Joe Biden was silent or absent. In either case, decision-making took on a glacial pace. First, a Chinese intelligence-gathering balloon traveled across the US over sensitive national defense installations like the intercontinental ballistic missile fields and a critical communications node at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, essential to the US strategic Global Reach capability. The US president didn’t take a briefing for four days. Meanwhile, what may be a catastrophic toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, endangering the lives of Americans, got little attention from the White House and zero mention by the US Secretary of Transportation for days.
All of America has been witness to a troubling display of indecision regarding the balloon infestation of the US. The most alarming aspect of the Biden White House’s failure to alert the public of a potential breach of American sovereign airspace by a Chinese balloon is that the national security team did not detect the slow-moving airship until it had flown across Alaska and most of Canada. Furthermore, neither the Defense Department nor the national security apparatus informed the public – it took a couple of folks in Montana with binoculars to break the news.
White House Decision-Making Flawed and Late
The lack of a firm grasp of what needs to be done – or any sense of urgency to do it – is absent among the current residents of the White House. Jed Babbin, author of “Enough Balloons for a Circus,” recently published in The American Spectator, told Liberty Nation:
“The problem with President Biden and his advisors is very serious. None of them have the experience or expertise to identify the major threats this nation faces so they don’t believe those problems need solutions. For example, Biden is sleepwalking us into a very big war with China which, at this point, we’re likely to lose.”
Ultimately, not realizing when the US is in grave peril drives decision-making paralysis. It seems this was also the case with the hazardous chemical-laden train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the subsequent release of toxic fumes. As Liberty Nation pointed out, the caustic plume of acrid smoke billowed from the train wreckage, impacting nearly 20 square miles of neighborhoods and businesses in the area. The event happened on Feb. 3 and was covered sparsely by the national media.
More worrying is that the Biden administration did not respond effectively for nearly a week.
Numerous individuals in the area of the vinyl chloride spill have reported harmful effects on pets and other small animals. “I have heard alarming anecdotes about contaminated waterways and effects on wildlife,” Sen. J. D. Vance (R-OH) said in a statement released by his office. “The local fire department has borne the brunt of this catastrophe, and they need resources from FEMA to decontaminate equipment and ensure they continue to operate.”
White House Unconcerned About Toxic Chemical Spill
Pete Buttigieg (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg was characteristically detached, choosing instead to scold Americans for having too many hard-hat workers in construction jobs who did not reflect the ethnicity of the communities in which they work. Ten days after the derailment, Buttigieg did give a shout-out regarding the train derailment disaster in a tweet. “[H]e is ‘concerned about the impacts’ of the disaster. ‘USDOT has been supporting the investigation led by The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB),’ Buttigieg tweeted, in part,” according to Fox News.
Whether it’s intelligence gathering balloons from China flying over sensitive military installations or an appalling lack-of-interest response to a health-endangering toxic chemical spill, what should concern Americans about the administration’s crisis action responses are two-fold. First, there is no action, and when there is a response, it generally comes late. Second, the Biden administration has a penchant for keeping the American people in the dark until the news media drags them kicking and screaming into the spotlight to explain.
Then those explanations lack consistency and credibility.
Reports from US Senators and members of Congress who received classified briefings on the unidentified objects reveal they learned nothing new and still have the same questions. The president’s team does not know, knows but won’t say, or is making stuff up. Recently, for example, White House Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall explained to governors on a conference call about the latest “object” sightings and shootdowns: “’And it turns out, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them…[including] used car lot balloons.” One wonders just how many used car dealerships there are in the bleak regions of northern Alaska and the Canadian Yukon, where two of the objects were downed. The Biden administration is not timely in its crisis responses and not believable when they do respond. The White House needs to up its game.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliation.
