Embarrassing excuse offered for Biden’s vanishing State of the Union Address
All of a sudden, here it is the end of February, and there is no State of the Union (SOTU) address scheduled for President Biden. That's odd because last month, Biden promised what sounds exactly like a SOTU:
"Next month, in my first appearance before a joint session of Congress, I will lay out my 'Build Back Better' recovery plan," he said. "It will make historic investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, innovation, and research and development in clean energy."
The AP and PBS both got wind that the address was to be given on February 23 in and said so in posts that are now deep-sixed:
But on February 16, Jen Psaki denied such a plan in a press conference:
[W]hen asked about the timing, his press secretary Jen Psaki said there had never been a plan for him to address a joint session this month.
"We don't know where the Feb. 23 date came from. It's a great mystery," she said during the regular daily briefing.
"I've not Nancy Drewed that one out today, but it was never planned to be in February, and we don't have a date for a joint session at this point," Psaki said, comparing herself to the popular character in a series of children's books who solves mysteries.
It is only tradition that a president address a joint session of Congress early in the year to fulfill the constitutional requirement (Article II, Section 3) that a POTUS "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient[.]"
Jimmy Carter, a failed one-term president, actually skipped his in the year of his inauguration, missing an opportunity to lay out his plan for the presidency and the nation, with blanket television coverage, plus plenty of pomp and circumstance. And look what happened to him.
Yet Biden's handlers seem to have pulled the plug on the man the late Rush Limbaugh mocked as "Plugs" because of his hair transplants to forestall a receding hairline. The lickspittle media are rushing in with "fact checks" to assure the nation that there is no requirement or deadline for a SOTU speech. But it is awkward, especially considering the rising doubts about Biden's mental and physical state. Nick Arama of RedState expressed the view of many:
Let's face it. There's a big problem with having Joe try to deliver a ninety-minute speech at 9:00 p.m. at night without a teleprompter in front of Congress. He has trouble just making it through basic remarks before media for a few minutes, much less a speech of that length. They must be wracking their brains to figure out how they're going to pull it off.
As we previously reported, Biden hasn't even had a solo press conference with the media yet. By this time, both Barack Obama and Donald Trump had done solo pressers.
The excuse dredged up yesterday for missing SOTU is...you guessed it...the January 6 Capitol incursion, which the left wants to make the defining moment of the century:
The Capitol Police is keeping its security posture high in response to intelligence that indicates some extremists who joined the Jan. 6 insurrection have discussed plans to attack the building during the State of the Union, Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman revealed Thursday.
The chatter among extremists about trying to blow up the Capitol during the still-unscheduled presidential address, Pittman said, has prompted the Capitol Police to maintain the elevated presence it has kept since last month's riot. Any decrease in the police's posture, she said, would come after the threat passes and other gaps identified in the aftermath of the Capitol siege are resolved.
While she didn't precisely blame the de-scheduling of the SOTU on "chatter among extremists," that is the logical conclusion, and it is an embarrassing one, especially considering the thousands of National Guard troops still occupying the nation's capital.
Democrats know that Biden is not all there. That's why a bunch of them want to take away the power for him to launch a nuclear strike. Just yesterday, he had to be reminded by Kamala, at a COVID event, not to go wandering up to people without wearing a mask:
Kamala reminds Biden to put on his mask
— Jewish Deplorable (@TrumpJew2) February 25, 2021
Weekend at Joey’s pic.twitter.com/YBhYO7euls
Check out the look he gets from Fauci for going off-script on mask.
Twitter video sc
The Democrats Are Not Governing
Let’s just state this unequivocally right up front: The Democrats have no interest in governing the country with the aim of enhancing the country’s fortunes for the benefit of the entire population. Instead, the Democrats have two aims and they’re quite clear to anyone who is paying even the most casual attention:
- Pander to their selected special-interest groups with over-the-top rulings and executive orders for the express purpose of buying their votes and hopefully cementing future electoral victories.
- Undo every possible policy put in place by President Trump for the purpose of eradicating any vestige of his presence on the American political scene.
Most of Biden’s executive orders accomplish both goals at the same time -- they pay debt service to the voting blocs that are key to future Democratic victories, while simultaneously dismantling President Trump’s America First accomplishments.
Personal communications style controversies aside, no president has ever been more focused on the overall good of the American people than President Trump. From promoting the expanded energy production that led us -- finally! -- to true energy independence and seemingly permanent low petroleum prices to rebuilding our military and greatly enhancing America’s security and influence on the global stage to building the border wall and straightening out our ridiculously haphazard, costly and disruptive immigration system to promoting a business environment where private businesses felt confident and supported -- instead of vilified and demonized by the federal government -- leading to the best unemployment numbers among minority groups in history, everything President Trump did redounded directly to the good of the American people.
That was his intent: make life better for all Americans. And he did it, as a matter of verifiable, indisputable record. However, he made two big mistakes:
- He thought his political enemies (the Democrats and the liberal media) would eventually come around and see the good that the citizenry was enjoying as a result of his policies and thus back off from being unrelentingly hostile to being merely the loyal opposition.
- He misjudged the personal hatred his caustic style, his defeat of Hillary, and his intent to rip the cover off D.C. corruption and “drain the swamp” would engender among his opponents. (Opponents in both parties, by the way.) For over four years, the unfounded witch hunts never ceased.
So, after unprecedented, undeniable, documented fraud, we are left with Joe Biden as the country’s “President.” (Note to the Fraud Deniers: Liberal Media reporting dishonesty along with judicial cowardice in not taking up the cases does not constitute “debunking” of voting fraud.)
Now we have Biden being propped up to do the far Left’s bidding and remake America into something they desire. Joe is simply a puppet. One look at his vacuous blank stare, the robotic, wooden manner in which he speaks to the camera -- painfully struggling to read the 20/200-sized teleprompter words -- his badly mangled syntax when, despite his handlers’ best efforts to control his every utterance, he manages to say something spontaneous, it’s quite clear that the Hair-Sniffer-in-Chief is not exactly operating as a fully-functioning president. No, he’s operating exactly as everyone expected him to.
His puppet masters are pulling all the strings, molding America into something unrecognizable, a distorted, mutant caricature of the country we once lived in. The street names and physical landmarks are familiar, but everything else around us is changing. And it’s changing for the worse, very quickly.
Here are just a few negative developments:
We’ve rejoined the Paris Climate Accords. It’s a sham of a so-called international climate agreement that even John Kerry admits is all for show and will accomplish absolutely nothing. In words spoken on December 9, 2015 , Kerry commits the worst sin a politician can commit: He tells the truth --
…The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what -- that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.
If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions -- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -- it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.
- We’ve opened the southern border and relaxed our immigration standards. Unrestricted, job-
- '
- stealing, taxpayer-funded refugees are once again flooding into the country.
- The Keystone pipeline has been canceled and exploration/production leases on Federal lands have been rescinded. With the world oil market reacting instantly to what it correctly sees as a marked reduction in supply coming from the U.S., crude oil prices have shot up from the low $40’s to the mid-$60’s/bbl in no time, and gasoline has risen from around $2.10/gal to $2.70/gal. Summer 2021 promises to be fun.
- We’re trying desperately to find a way to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal, remove the economic sanctions on them and help them threaten Israel with nuclear annihilation.
- Finally, landmark social changes like the Equality Act (allowing men to compete against women in sports and shower in their locker rooms) and reparations for slavery are being enacted or garnering serious support.
The question is, how do these actions benefit the country as a whole? How does unrestricted illegal immigration benefit society? How do higher gasoline and heating costs help the typical middle-class working family? When a 17-year-old girl is cheated out of a college athletic scholarship because she lost her race to a biological male, the good that comes from that is what, exactly?
Nothing that the “Biden” administration is doing helps the country as a whole. That is not their intent. All they are doing is feeding the insatiable appetites of their special-interest voting blocs in hopes of securing future electoral victories. The best that normal people can hope for is an anti-Democratic voter backlash in upcoming elections -- assuming the country isn’t too far gone by then and that those upcoming elections are actually on the up and up.
This is a critically important juncture in America’s journey. There are no guarantees that this is going to end well.
Blue State Blues: Will the Politburo Let Joe Biden Address Congress?
President Joe Biden has not delivered an address to a joint session of Congress yet.
Traditionally, the annual address — known as the “State of the Union” in every year of a presidency except the first — happens in the first two months of the year.
Occasionally, presidents will deliver written reports, or radio addresses, rather than (or in addition to) the speech to the House and the Senate that Americans have come to expect. But rarely do they happen after February.
The Constitution does not require that the president address Congress, only that he provide a report. Article II, Section 3 provides: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
From Thomas Jefferson through William Taft, presidents gave written reports; speeches resumed with President Woodrow Wilson in 1913.
Thus far, we have heard nothing from the Biden White House about what Biden plans to do.
At a press briefing Feb. 23, Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if there had been “conversations about a joint address to Congress,” and if he would be willing to deliver an address “virtually.”
Psaki’s response: “[H]e’s clearly willing to hold events virtually … And we’re certainly open to a range of formats. I don’t have any update on a date or a timeline for joint address.”
It was an odd response for a White House that had dozens of executive orders ready for Biden’s signature on Day One. Surely they had considered the possibility of a virtual address? Or the basic obligation of a written report?
Perhaps the delay is due to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who considers herself equal in rank, if not superior, to the President of the United States. She has not extended Biden an invitation to speak.
“We won’t be doing any of that until we pass our COVID bill. That’s the first order of business,” she told Capitol Hill reporters on Feb. 11.
She has tried such tactics before.
In 2019, after inviting then-President Donald Trump to give the State of the Union, she delayed the address because of a government shutdown over a budget impasse relating to the border wall. She only renewed the invitation once President Trump caved and agreed to a temporary deal to open the government.
If Pelosi is allowed to block the president from addressing Congress — even a president from her own party — it would mark a shift in the delicate balance of power between the three branches of government.
The executive has expanded its power in recent decades, and critics (including myself) have called for Congress to be more assertive.
But there are a few things for which the president is solely responsible, and the State of the Union is one of them.
Biden’s delay is troubling for reasons other than the separation of powers.
It also reinforces suspicions that Biden is not actually in charge of his own administration. His Inaugural Address was about “unity,” but the far-left runs his policies. When Psaki is asked about what the president thinks about a particular issue, she often answers that she has not spoken to him, or to the “team.” There is a sense the country is being governed by a committee or politburo.
When there’s a leader, things get done. There is no leader.
Whether Biden delivers a speech or not, he must still discharge his constitutional obligations. There is really no excuse for a report that is not delivered by the end of February.
Before Roosevelt, presidents typically spoke at year’s end, rather than at the beginning. Is that how long we will have to wait for Biden to set an agenda?
Or is there some reason he is unwilling to confront the American people?
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse ‘Biggest Hypocrite in Politics’ on Dark Money
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has served as one of the most vocal Democrat critics of “dark money’s” influence in politics, but the Rhode Island Democrat appears to be a significant beneficiary of dark money.
Whitehouse has frequently criticized the alleged nefarious effects of dark money on politics, particularly as it relates to conservative and Republican dark money.
Dark Money refers to political spending in which the source of the money is not disclosed. Political groups typically use dark money through political action groups such as 501(c)(4)s, and the federal government does not require those groups to disclose their donors.
“Opaque” nonprofits and shell companies may also give unlimited donations to super PACs.
The transparency organization OpenSecrets noted that while the Federal Election Commission (FEC) usually requires super PACs to disclose their donors, “some of these groups are effectively dark money outlets when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor.”
Whitehouse most recently criticized conservative groups, allegedly funded by dark money, for launching attacking ads against President Joe Biden’s nominees.
Whitehouse asked rhetorically, “Dark money groups running ads complaining about dark money. Hilarious. What are the chances they will support S.1 and DISCLOSE Act to get rid of dark money? Nil.”
Dark money groups running ads complaining about dark money. Hilarious. What are the chances they will support S.1 and DISCLOSE Act to get rid of dark money? Nil. https://t.co/F3f7Izx8JJ
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) February 18, 2021
Whitehouse also told former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in January 2020 how then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) kept the Senate Republican Conference in line using dark money:
Whitehouse also attacked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in November 2019, claiming that the organization was using its dark money to attack efforts to combat alleged climate change.
Whitehouse and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) also introduced legislation in July 2020 that would require dark money conservative judicial groups to disclose their donors.
“A decades-long effort by big corporations and partisan donors to rig the courts using dark money is working; they’ve won over 80 partisan, 5-4 decisions,” Whitehouse said.
Despite his partisan grandstanding over dark money’s allegedly nefarious effects, Whitehouse has received significant contributions from dark money organizations.
Since 2005, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), a dark money environmentalist group, has served as Whitehouse’s largest donor. LCV has contributed $187,861 and an additional $12,062 from PACs associated with LCV to Whitehouse.
Despite decrying dark money and moneyed interests influencing campaigns, he raised $5 million more than his Republican counterpart during his 2018 reelection campaign. The Center for Responsive Politics found that Whitehouse’s top contributors come from law firms, retirees, and the finance sector.
Whitehouse also hoped in February 2019 that “liberal dark money” groups such as LCV and Demand Justice would donate to his campaign:
Whitehouse has had a long history with the American Constitution Society, which includes providing keynote speeches and publishing on their website. The American Constitution Society is funded by dark money.
Whitehouse spent his allotted 30 minutes during the confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court to attack conservative judicial groups, alleging that they are funded by dark money. However, the Wall Street Journal noted that Whitehouse is a significant beneficiary of dark money. The Journal explained:
[O]n Tuesday Mr. Whitehouse refused to abide by the normal practice for congressional witnesses of answering questions.
Mr. Whitehouse knew that, if he answered questions, he was under legal obligation to tell the truth. House Republicans might have asked him about the dark-money outfit Arabella Advisors. This for-profit entity oversees nonprofits including the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund, which together reported nearly a billion dollars in revenue in 2017 and 2018.
Arabella affiliate Demand Justice ran a smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh and is now calling for Democrats to pack the Supreme Court. Demand Justice bills itself as a “project” of the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund, and in public disclosures it lists the same office address as the two nonprofits.
Mr. Whitehouse’s silence about his own ties to dark-money networks shows his goal isn’t to clean up politics. He wants to silence those who disagree with him. If Mr. Whitehouse holds power in the Senate majority next year, do not expect what Joe Biden says will be a new era of comity and fair play.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) also noted during that hearing that Fortune 500 companies and Wall Street firms largely favor donating to Democrats over Republicans. He said:
Our Democratic colleagues when they address the issue of free speech, of so-called ‘dark money,’ and campaign finance contributions, are often deeply, deeply hypocritical. And, they don’t address the actual facts that exist. Here are some facts, of the top 20 organizations spending money for political speech in the year 2016, 14 of them gave virtually of their money to Democrats. And another three split their money evenly, so only three of the top 20 gave money to Republicans, what did that mean in practice? That meant that the top 20 super PACs donors contributed $422 million to Democrats and $189 million to Republicans.
“The senator from Rhode Island spoke about big corporate powers, without acknowledging that the contributions from the Fortune 500 in the presidential election overwhelmingly favors Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Cruz said during the confirmation hearing.
Comfortably Smug, a conservative Twitter pundit, asked Whitehouse, “So are you going to demand that the Dem dark money groups release the names of their donors???? @SenWhitehouse is the biggest hypocrite in politics, and that’s saying something.”
So are you going to demand that the Dem dark money groups release the names of their donors????@SenWhitehouse is the biggest hypocrite in politics, and that's saying something https://t.co/OTfHJbkxT3
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) February 18, 2021
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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