Even the media wing of the Democratic party cried foul this week when their candidate issued an incendiary statement regarding the president’s capacity to stop anyone and everyone from dying of the COVID-19 virus. During a televised town hall forum, former Vice President Joe Biden claimed that “if President Trump had done his job,” then “all the people” would still be alive. This bit of hyperbole was so breathtaking it caught the attention of The Washington Post and others who called him out for hitting the “Pinocchio meter.”
Mr. Biden’s statement in full reads: “If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people — I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data.”
What Data?
The Democratic nominee’s reference to information that does not exist led to a slap on the wrist from Washington’s legacy newspaper:“Actually, Biden is making this up. There is no data to support this, even if the president had moved rapidly in January to deal with the coronavirus and been able to persuade the Chinese leadership to be more forthcoming about the situation. Even nations that have been praised for their handling of the pandemic, such as South Korea, New Zealand and Iceland, have suffered some deaths (377 in South Korea, 25 in New Zealand and 10 in Iceland).”Next came Politico’s smackdown. Christopher Cadelago asserted: “But Biden vastly overstated what protections could have worked against the virus. He argued that had Trump done his job, everybody would still be alive — not true.” Indeed, Politico and The Washington Post are on point. In trying to pin the blame for the Coronavirus on the president, the Democratic candidate finally forced his pals in the media to point out his shameless hypocrisy. To what duplicity do we refer? It’s widely known that when the president called for a Chinese travel ban, Mr. Biden referred to the move as xenophobic. The Democratic leadership – including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- went so far as to conduct a photo op in Chinatown in Washington, DC, to signal their opposition to the president’s order. The question that arises from this latest remark by Biden is whether he genuinely believes what he says or merely feels so emboldened by an affectionate Fourth Estate that he can get away with wild untruths and exaggerations? What data is he referring to that is entirely unfamiliar to the rest of us? Moreover, is he able to comprehend that a president in a constitutional Republic only has so much power, or did the man from Scranton just learn that after walking back his “national mask mandate”? Does he understand that in these United States, Mr. Trump has to deal with 50 disparate governors and cannot play the role of a dictator – even during a national health crisis? In other words, is Joe Biden in touch with reality, or is he working from a limited memory of public information as well as recognition of his own rhetoric and actions? For example, is Mr. Biden even aware of the fact that he’s spoken against the fracking industry myriad times only to reverse his stance without acknowledging his previous statements? This is only one example of the former vice president’s legendary flip-flopping. Now in what he’s termed the “Harris-Biden” Administration, the former vice president is making bizarre overstatements that even his pals in the media cannot abide. Either way, Joe Biden might strive to get in touch with reality before taking the stage for the first presidential debate. Such as it is, his assertion regarding President Trump’s superhuman ability to prevent anyone from dying of the Chinese virus does not resemble the children’s book Pinocchio so much as the well-known game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. ~ Read more from Leesa K. Donner.
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