Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin: A pair that should scare the bejabbers out of the world.
The goofy twins.
Just a coincidence I guess, but it’s interesting how both President Joe Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin went on the world stage yesterday to display on television their dangers.
While Democrats were trying to fend off special counsel Robert Hur’s non-indictment slap at Biden’s memory, Tucker Carlson was struggling to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to say one honest thing.
The twin telecasts were a stark reminder how dangerous are these two who have at their disposal the world’s largest stockpiles of nuclear bombs, making them the greatest treats to global peace, stability and democracy. How long will it take for one or both of them stumble into a catastrophe?
Both are dangerous in different ways, but both are damn scary.
First, Putin. I rely mostly on Freddy Gray’s readable review in The Spectator of the Carlson/Biden interview. He begins:
The trouble with aging authoritarians is not that nobody dares tell them they are wrong. It’s that nobody ever tells them they are tiresome.
Yes, as Tucker Carlson’s big interview in Moscow finally dropped online tonight, the world learned that Vladimir Putin is, among other things, an almighty history bore. He just cannot be stopped.
Carlson did a credible job of asking the right questions but each one launched Putin on endless, sometimes 20-minute-long, concoction of historical balderdash to make you wonder if he really believes it. It’s scary if he does, because his warped view of history and reasons for invading Ukraine are in his mind justification for attacking a neighboring, sovereign nation.
He’s trying to stomp out Ukrainians as Ukrainians, arguing that they are really Russians. It’s a unique form of genocide. In the two-hour interview, he went as far back as 862 to explain why his invasion of Ukraine was justified. Hitler gave the same explanation for some of his conquests, arguing that he was protecting Germans.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t coming from someone as whacko as Putin. He must believe that the rest of the world is stupid and ignorant, willing to accept his bizarre and dangerous historical BS as he pursues his dream of recreating the czarist empire, or more disturbing, the Soviet realm.
As for Biden, it was a horrible day. It closed with a bizarre press conference at which he tried to prove his competence. He only made things worse and triggered calls for him to not run for re-election or to resign post haste.
The bad day for Biden started when the Supreme Court signaled that Colorado’s attempt to control a federal election by booting Donald Trump off the ballot is not very persuasive. Then came Hur’s devastating report detailing how Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed classified materials. Said the report:
Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. [Emphasis in original.]
In brief, he is a national security threat. Nonetheless, Hur declined to recommend an indictment because the chances of being convicted by a Washington D.C. jury were slim to none. That’s because the jury would see Biden as he presented himself in the two days of Hur’s interviews of the president:
We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.
Ouch.
Most media coverage focused on Biden’s “mishandling” of classified documents while he was vice president and thereafter. But it’s much worse. The report said: “The classified documents and other materials recovered in this case spanned Mr. Biden's career in national public life.” [My emphasis.] For Biden, it was a bad habit, extending over decades. It was evidence of his conceit.
Hur noted that, “During that career, Mr. Biden has long seen himself as a historic figure,” mentioning that he unsuccessfully ran for president in 1980, 1988 and 2008—that must be some kind of record of failure. The report continued:
He believed his record during decades in the Senate made him worthy of the presidency, and he collected papers and artifacts related to significant issues and events in his career. He used these materials to write memoirs published in 2007 and 2017, to document his legacy, and to cite as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber. [Emphasis in the original.]
A lifetime devoted to proving what an exceptional guy he is.
That reflects my own view that Biden is a man of mediocre intelligence and ability who is a hero in his own mind. But throughout his career he has demonstrated a habit of bending with the wind and following the crowd, in pursuit of his political fortunes. He’s a man who climbed the ladder to a position of power in the Senate by the mere fact that he had been there a long, long time.
Biden is the commander-in-chief. He cannot show himself to be a stumbling old man who doesn’t have a mind of his own. That Biden’s incompetence was evidenced on the same day that Putin tried to fool the world was perhaps a part of an empyrean plan to alert everyone to the twin perils we face.
Not that Donald Trump is any more comforting.
One difference between Biden and Putin is that if Biden were recounting historic events, he'd refer to something that happened at 8:62 yesterday morning.