By Steve BermanThe truest thing President Joe Biden said last night in his (final?) State of the Union address was his first line, “if I was smart, I’d go home now.” Joe should have gone home.
First, I’ll get the faint praise out of the way. He managed to make it through the speech with a minimal number of gaffes. There were only a few times I could not understand the words coming out of his mouth, which is above average for this president. But a couple of times I was like, “What? He’s lying!” Okay more than a couple of times. Biden wasn’t spinning fake stories about “Pop Tart” or some gay kiss in the 1950s in Wilmington, Delaware; he was flat-out inventing stuff about women, the border, and the economy.
The Boston Globe headline called Biden “feisty.” I love that word; it’s freighted with the image of an old man yelling “get off my lawn!” at wayward teens whose basketball wandered onto his property. The word smells of Pine Sol and Ben Gay. When Biden tries to channel Jack Kennedy or Ronald Reagan (!), he isn’t bold, or steel-spined, he’s “feisty.” The Washington Post went with “fiery.” I’m sure by now both those headlines have been squashed by editors who realize that every time some reporter uses those words, Biden loses another ten votes.
For a good chunk of his speech, Biden tried to somehow connect Alabama’s IVF fight to abortion and “protecting women.” To use a Biden word, it’s malarkey. The Alabama IVF issue began when the state’s supreme court, ruling in a case where an individual was charged under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and found not at fault by the trial court, reversed that and declared that viable embryos had “personhood” rights to not be destroyed. Properly fertilized, frozen embryos could be implanted in any surrogate mother and grow into a baby. That’s the court’s ruling. The effect of it was many IVF clinics panicked because they all harvest multiple embryos to increase the chance of a successful pregnancy.
The IVF clinics stopped doing anything pending some legal clarification. If embryos were “people” than many of their practices could open them or their staff up to prosecution for wrongful death. The state of Alabama’s intent was surely not to treat IVF like abortion, but that’s what Biden (and many abortion advocates) claim. In fact, the legislature rushed a bill to Gov. Kay Ivey’s desk, and she signed it into law, that protects IVF clinics from liability. Let’s be clear here, because Biden and others want to muddy these waters.
There’s a difference between a woman who gets pregnant (we used to call it “knocked up”) not intending to have the child, and a couple who is earnestly trying to have children and turns to IVF as a medical procedure to enable them to become pregnant. One situation is where a mother decides to throw away a fertilized embryo growing in her womb, that occurred through natural processes, because she doesn’t want the consequences of having unprotected sex. The other situation is a medical procedure designed to produce a viable fertilized embryo that the mother wishes to carry to term. IVF clinics should be protected, and if that means some embryos don’t get used, it’s the couple’s decision on whether to freeze them indefinitely, or dispose of them humanely. It’s not abortion.
But somehow, Biden called into question the Dobbs decision, and to the faces of the Supreme Court Justices sitting in the room, threatened them that “those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America,” and “I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.” No, Joe, you won’t. It’s a flat out lie. Most Americans, including women, are for some kind of regulation on abortion, whether it’s a six-week ban, or a 36-week ban. And IVF has nothing to do with either. The Supreme Court did the country a favor by tossing a terrible decision that stood for 50 years. There’s no way it’s coming back.
Moving to the economy, Biden laughably claimed that he reduced the federal deficit by “over $1 trillion.” Hearing that, I told my 14-year old that I paid off our mortgage and now we own our house debt-free. If Biden can invent such a lie, then why can’t I? (Because it’s a lie, and my bank would laugh too.)
Biden took Trump’s deficit projections handed down by the Congressional Budget Office in 2021, of a $963 billion deficit in 2023, and turned it into an actual deficit of $1.7 trillion. Yes, the deficit went down from the COVID peak, but it went down nearly a trillion dollars less than it would have had Biden not spent like a drunken tax-and-spend liberal.
Also, Biden somehow invented the lie that Republicans want to cut Social Security. In office, and in his campaign, Donald Trump never once said he wanted to cut Medicare or Social Security. And Republicans in Congress have treated those programs like the sacred cows they’ve always been. Yes, they will run out of money, but growing the economy is the best way to fund them, not making up lies.
All the economic comparisons Biden made were based on the COVID-19 economy versus now. Well, duh. Nobody was working during COVID-19 if they worked in manufacturing, retail or service, other than essential workers. Now the pandemic is over and people are working again, though not for enough money to pay for two years of inflation. The fact that inflation is less than it was doesn’t change the fact that things are still expensive, and jobs aren’t all paying more money to buy them. And the fact that unemployment is low doesn’t mean the jobs people have are good jobs. That is, unless you’re Joe Biden making stuff up.
Another thing that bothered me is Biden taking credit for ending COVID-19 while attacking his “predecessor,” who he never named by name but mentioned thirteen times. If it wasn’t for Operation Warp Speed, which as I remember, Democrats, liberals and the press thought to be completely irresponsible and dangerous to roll out vaccines so quickly (until Biden was in office, when they did a 180 degree turn), then the pandemic could have lasted an additional two or three years while the vaccines were tested and slowly released. I don’t care if you disagree: the vaccines saved lives, a lot of lives. It may have been Trump’s greatest achievement in office–history will decide.
Finally, in an admission that the border crisis is real, and that it falls squarely on his own shoulders, President Biden mentioned Laken Riley, but called her “Lincoln” because it was past his bedtime and his meds were wearing off. He blamed Republicans for failing to work with him on a border bill, after spending years encouraging sanctuary cities, and relaxing immigration enforcement. Now that these things are backfiring, Biden suddenly wants to be bipartisan (while saying that Republicans are a threat to democracy).
Laken Riley was killed by an illegal alien who came up from Venezuela, and across the border illegally in late 2022. He was arrested in New York City for an attempt to injure a child under 17 but released because NYC doesn’t hold violent illegal immigrants, and doesn’t cooperate with federal authorities. Then Riley’s killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, went to Georgia, where he was given a citation for shoplifting. Laken Riley wasn’t killed by statistics, or some aberration that most illegals aren’t killers (they aren’t but so what?). Riley was killed by a person who was purposely let into the country illegally, repeatedly released despite committing other crimes, including violent offenses, and put on the street until he murdered someone. Even Biden couldn’t deny it was a failure of the border policy.
Even Biden called Ibarra an “illegal,” even if he couldn’t pronounce Laken Riley’s name. Riley did nothing wrong. The government failed her. Joe Biden failed her and wants to blame Republicans for it. Because he’s “feisty.” Well, feisty won’t fix the border.
Supposedly, Biden was going to make some major announcement on Gaza. Toward the end of his speech, he said he wanted our military to set up a pier in Gaza on the Mediterranean coast to bring in more aid. He also said he wouldn’t put U.S. military boots on the ground to do it. I’m not sure how that will be achieved. I’m all for the air drops of aid into Gaza. Nobody wants Gazan children to starve–well except Hamas, they want everyone to starve.
Let me make a prediction. If U.S. troops are in Gaza, Hamas will attack them. The U.S. will be drawn into this terrorist war. And if some of the troops are sympathetic to Hamas (like Aaron Bushnell, the airman who set himself aflame outside the Israeli embassy), you can bet they’ll be used for terrorist propaganda. Biden’s plan will backfire. And Al Jazeera reported that the U.N. thinks the pier is a useless gesture anyway. “[Air] and sea is not a substitute for land, and nobody says otherwise,” Sigrid Kaag, U.N. coordinator for humanitarian and reconstruction in Gaza told reporters. I say it’s better than nothing, and it’s much better than starving.
President Biden gave a campaign speech, full stop. Some of it was true, but most of it was lies. In three days, we will all have forgotten the speech. Except that he was “feisty.” It takes a half day of sleep, six days of practice, and a handful of pills to get him feisty, so don’t look for it to happen again soon.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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