Biden's Lie-Filled Press Conference
He called on "correspondents" too deferential to challenge him.
5 comments
“We’re sending back the vast majority of the families that are coming,” Biden claimed, referring to families of migrants illegally crossing or seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.
“False,” declared the New York Times. “Federal officials recorded about 19,000 encounters with families at the southwestern border in February. Of those, about 7,900 families, or 42 percent, were expelled, far short of a majority.” The Times also cited an Axios report that the expulsion rate was 13 percent during the previous week.
Biden claimed that former President Donald Trump eliminated the funding for aid to the Central American countries that Biden had helped put together as the Obama administration's vice president. The purpose of the aid, Biden said, was to get at the root causes of why migrants were leaving those countries. “What did Trump do? He eliminated that funding,” Biden said. “He didn’t use it.”
“False,” declared the New York Times again. “President Donald J.Trump did not completely eliminate the aid that Mr. Biden cited,” the New York Times explained. The Times’ fact-checker pointed out that aid to Central America was set by Congress at $505.9 million in the 2021 fiscal year (which began during Trump’s term) and that the aid that Trump temporarily suspended in April 2019 was restored in October 2019.
The New York Times also said that Biden had “exaggerated” when he claimed that Trump had “shut down the number of beds available.” Calling this an exaggeration was too kind. Biden was lying once again. The Times' fact-checker noted that the monthly bed capacity grew to over 16,000 by December 2018, and that by Trump’s “last full month in office, in December 2020, monthly bed capacity was more than 13,000.” There were some reductions during the pandemic to comply with coronavirus protocols while Trump was in office – health precautions that the Biden administration is throwing to the wind as it tries to cope with the huge surge of illegal unaccompanied minors that its open border policy has invited.
The New York Times’ fact-checker barely scratched the surface of Biden’s parade of lies during his press conference. The fact-checker omitted, for example, Biden’s slanderous claim that Trump was willing to let unaccompanied minors, who ended up at the border, starve to death. Biden said that he would never do such a thing, attacking a strawman of his own creation. It is true that Trump did not let unaccompanied minors who illegally entered the United States to remain in the United States. However, Trump didn’t just abandon them to die of starvation. The Trump administration flew many of the minors back to their home countries for safety reasons and to deter more minors from risking their lives by taking the treacherous journey north to the United States. Biden should be following Trump’s example out of humane concern for the minors, rather than spewing slanderous lies to make himself look like some sort of compassionate hero that he is not.
Biden also lied when he claimed that nothing has changed this year under his watch from previous years in terms of normal seasonal increases in the number of migrants coming to the border. “There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March,” Biden said. “That happens every year.”
False. The surge of illegal aliens crossing the border now is reaching historic proportions that the Biden administration is unable to handle. Even Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, while denying that there is a crisis, has said that “We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”
The statistics are staggering. Over 100,000 people were encountered in February 2021, 24,000 more than in February 2019 when the Trump administration was encountering a surge of its own. “The US Border Patrol has detained more than 11,000 unaccompanied migrant children between February 28 to March 20,” CNN reported, based on preliminary government data it had reviewed. “In all of February, Border Patrol apprehended nearly 9,300 unaccompanied children at the US southern border, up from around 5,600 in January.”
The number of unaccompanied minors who cross the U.S.-Mexico border each day and are detained by U.S. border officials has now reached an average of about 600 and is climbing. More than 16,000 minors crossing the border illegally are expected to be taken into custody overall during the month of March. The government is projecting significant increases of unaccompanied minors who could cross the border in April and May.
The unaccompanied illegal minors who make it across the border are being crammed together in ramshackle Border Patrol quarters in numbers far above their capacity. But Biden does not want the media to document this unfolding calamity. His claim of interest in transparency is another big lie.
Biden was asked at his news conference when he would be ready to commit to allowing journalists to have access to the overcrowded facilities. Biden replied, “I will commit when my plan, very shortly, is underway to let you have access to not just them, but to other facilities as well… you’ll have full access to everything once we get this thing moving.” When asked how soon that will be, Biden said, “I don’t know.” Biden's PR staff sure knows. The media will be allowed in after everything is tidied up to look great for the cameras.
Biden’s web of deceit spun during his press conference did not stop with immigration. Take his recent conversion to opposing the current filibuster procedures, for example. About 15 years ago, then-Senator Biden spoke about the importance of the filibuster in glowing terms:
“First, the Founders certainly did not envision the Senate as a body of unadulterated majoritarianism…It was clear from the start that the Senate would be a different type of legislative body; it would be a consensus body that respects the rights of minorities, even the extreme minority power of a single Senator because that single Senator can represent a single and whole State. The way it is played out in practice was through the right of unlimited debate.”
Now that Biden is in the White House, and the Democrats control both the House of Representatives and Senate, Biden is open to whatever changes are necessary to the filibuster rule to enact his leftwing agenda. If that means turning the Senate into "a body of unadulterated majoritarianism,” so be it. The ends justify the means.
At his news conference, Biden said that the filibuster is “being abused in a gigantic way.” As proof, he noted that from 1917 to 1971 “there was a total of 58 motions to break a filibuster that whole time. Last year alone, there were five times that many.”
Biden neglected to mention that it was the Senate Democrats who repeatedly used the filibuster during President Trump’s presidency, including in 2020. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed closure motions multiple times to try and shut down the Democrats' filibusters. McConnell could have muscled through an end to the legislative filibuster with his Republican majority at the time. That way, the Democrat minority in the Senate would have been unable to prevent the passage of Trump’s legislative initiatives, including major immigration reforms to tighten border security and law enforcement, when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. But McConnell chose not to do so.
McConnell is being consistent in wanting to preserve the current filibuster rule, both when he was in the majority and currently while he is in the minority. Now that Democrats are in the majority, President Biden, along with today’s Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, are perfectly happy to scrap the filibuster rule to achieve their radical policy objectives.
Biden says he agrees with Barack Obama’s characterization of the filibuster as a “relic” of the Jim Crow era. Trying to tag Republicans’ use of the filibuster with the Jim Crow label is the height of hypocrisy. Senate Republicans have not even used the legislative filibuster yet this session. Senate Democrats themselves, however, used the filibuster frequently when they were in the minority during the Trump era. How come there was no outcry from Biden against the so-called Jim Crow “relic” when Senate Democrats last year used the filibuster to kill South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott's police reform bill following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor?
As Senator McConnell observed, “We could have had Federal legislation on the books since last summer, putting more body cameras on police officers, requiring fuller incident reporting to the FBI, and finally making lynching a Federal crime, among other things. Democrats stopped it. They stopped it using the filibuster. If my Democratic colleagues really believe what they are saying, did they themselves use a racist tool against Senator Scott's police reform bill just last year?” McConnell added, with a touch of irony, "Or is our colleagues’ story that the filibuster was not an offensive relic as recently as last summer, but magically became an offensive relic the instant Democrats came to have a majority?"
A true journalist would have asked Biden at his news conference whether then-Senator Kamala Harris was indulging in a racist Jim Crow “relic” when she helped lead the Democrats’ filibuster against Senator Tim Scott’s police reform bill. A true journalist would have asked Biden whether he thought his vice president was trying to preserve a racist Jim Crow “relic” when, in 2017, then-Senator Harris signed on to a letter urging the Senate leaders to leave the legislative filibuster alone as is.
However, President Biden’s lies and hypocrisy were not challenged by the obsequious White House correspondents he called on during his press conference. What a contrast with former President Donald Trump’s White House press conferences where Trump had no problem handling tough questions from an antagonistic press corps!
Parallels between Biden’s border policy and Cuomo’s nursing home scandal
Some friends of mine have been making interesting comparisons of the parallels between the completely unnecessary crises created by President Biden (at the border) and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. I am sure there are others, as well, but these are the ones we have come up with for now.
Spreading COVID
- Biden requires CBP to allow COVID positive illegal migrants into our country and is spreading them across the country
- Cuomo sent COVID-positive elders into nursing homes, killing almost 15,000 vulnerable seniors there
Predictability of a self-created crisis
- The Biden border crisis was not only predictable but he was warned about what would happen
- Cuomo was warned by doctors who work in nursing homes about the risks to the other residents
Coverup
- Biden is refusing to allow the media and American people to see the conditions in which illegal immigrants are held, especially children, and has delayed releasing the numbers of illegals allowed entry or not
- Cuomo notoriously and probably illegally covered up the number of nursing home deaths
Refusing to use Trump-provided solutions
- Biden abandoned Trump’s successful border security arrangements with Mexico, his safe third country agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to apply for asylum in their home countries, and ended border wall construction
- Cuomo didn’t take advantage of the Federal assistance in creating hospital facilities in the Javits Center and the USNS Comfort hospital ship
Lack of preparation
- Biden issued executive orders on the border without being prepared in terms of personnel, procedures, or facilities to deal with their consequences
- Cuomo left nursing homes being unprepared and unequipped in terms of personnel, procedures, and facilities to isolate those admitted with COVID or otherwise protect the other residents
Family separation
- Biden encouraged family separations by encouraging unaccompanied minors
- Cuomo caused permanent family separations with elders’ deaths while isolated from their family in long-term care facilities
Exposure to COVID
- CBP and other personnel dealing with illegal migrants, who should have been given vaccination priority, have been exposed to COVID.
- Cuomo ordering elderly COVID-infected patients into nursing homes exposed nursing home staff
Media adoration and protection
- Biden faced softball questions, including praise for his character, at his first press conference
- Cuomo was built up by the media as the competent and sexy anti-Trump
Unwanted touching of females
- Biden likes to touch little girls
- Cuomo allegedly grabs and kisses female staffers
Favors for family
- Hunter Biden has made millions of dollars from countries that were being overseen by then-VP Biden
- Cuomo got early access to the COVID vaccine for members of his family
Yale
- Biden has a stupid, dishonest son (Hunter) who graduated from Yale
- Cuomo has a stupid, dishonest brother (Chris) who graduated from Yale
Penalties for Lying on ATF Background Check Form – As Hunter Biden Allegedly Did – Include Fines, Jail Time
Amid reports Hunter Biden may have given false information on an ATF background check form, it is notable that the punishment for false answers on that form includes fines up to $250,000 and/or ten years of imprisonment.
ATF Form 4473 is the background check each would-be gun buyer fills out upon trying to buy a gun at retail. A Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder then calls the FBI and relays the information from the form, receiving the all-clear to sell the gun or a rejection, which means the gun cannot be sold to the would-be buyer. A third option is that the FBI can alert the FFL holder that it will extend the background check another three business days to give FBI reviewers additional time to check criminal records.
On March 25, 2021, Breitbart News pointed out that Hunter Biden, who is President Joe Biden’s son, may have lied about his history of drug use when filling out ATF Form 4473 for a gun purchase in 2018.
The form asks questions like, “Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form? … Warning: You are not the actual transferee/buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual transferee/buyer, the licensee cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.”
A “yes” or “no” answer is required.
ATF Form 4473 also asks, “Are you a fugitive from justice?”
Again, a “yes” or “no” answer is required.
The question pertinent to Hunter Biden’s alleged 2018 gun purchase is drug related. It asks:
Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.
The would-be gun purchaser is required to answer “yes” or “no”.
ATF Form 4473 makes clear, “The information you provide will be used to determine whether you are prohibited by Federal or State law from receiving a firearm. Certain violations of the Gun Control Act, 18 U.S.C. 921 et. seq., are punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and/or up to a $250,000 fine.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
Report: Executive with Ties to Andrew Cuomo Received Special Access to Coronavirus Tests
A billionaire pharmaceutical company founder with links to embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) received special access to coronavirus tests at the start of the pandemic, according to a Thursday report.
The New York Times reveals:
[Regeneron] requested tests from the state for its president, Dr. George Yancopoulos, and his family after a “member of his household became infected with Covid-19,” a company spokeswoman said. State officials granted the request and tested the family at home in March. By then, New York had already become the epicenter of the pandemic, with a frightened populace suddenly confronted with a widespread shutdown in the face of a virus that little was known about. On April 1, Governor Cuomo then announced that Regeneron would create 500,000 kits for testing samples and provide them free of charge to New York State.
The Times‘ report comes after the Times-Union reported that Cuomo instructed state health officials to “prioritize” testing for members of his family, including his mother, Matilda Cuomo, and brother, Christopher Cuomo, a high-profile host at CNN. Both the governor and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker also asked state Department of Health officials to prioritize testing for influential individuals with connections to the Cuomo administration, according to the Albany-based newspaper. In a separate report, the Washington Post said the results of prioritized tests were immediately processed at a state laboratory.
Chris Cuomo announced back in March 2020 that he had contracted the virus, later telling the Associated Press in an interview: “I knew it was just a matter of time, to be honest, because of how often I was exposed to people.” The Post reports that a top New York Department of Health doctor visited the CNN host at his Hamptons home to obtain testing samples from him and members of his family.
A spokesperson for Cuomo attempted to dismiss the reports about prioritized testing, saying in a statement to Reuters, “We should avoid insincere efforts to rewrite the past.”
“We should avoid insincere efforts to rewrite the past. In the early days of this pandemic, when there was a heavy emphasis on contact tracing, we were absolutely going above and beyond to get people testing,” Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said.
News of prioritized testing comes as Cuomo faces dueling scandals — allegations of sexual harassment brought forth by multiple women and an alleged cover-up of data regarding nursing home deaths during the pandemic. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating whether aides to the governor provided false data regarding the number of deaths in such facilities, according to the New York Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment