Ouch. 2024 is not starting off well for Joe Biden. It's been kind of a disaster, really.
By now, it's no secret that Joe Biden is in a horribly weak position as he attempts to make a case to voters that they should trust him with another four years in office. His poll numbers have been underwater for the majority of his presidency, and normally reliably Democrat voters are abandoning him in droves. He's losing to Donald Trump in national polls and battleground state polls. Democrat strategists are telling him to drop out, and even Barack Obama is sounding the alarm that the campaign is in trouble and needs to make a change.
And that was just last year.
It goes without saying that Joe Biden desperately needed a reset to have even the slightest hope of salvaging his presidency before voters decide his fate. Less than two weeks into the new year, it's not going well.
Last week, we learned that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was hospitalized for nearly a week before it was made public. When the story first broke it was a serious scandal that highlighted the dangerous lack of transparency in the Biden administration, and yet, it has only gotten worse as more information became known. Austin’s nearly weeklong absence wasn’t just kept from the public but from the White House, too. Eventually, we were told that Austin’s deputy was in charge in his absence (something we should have been told anyway) — while she was on vacation. Worse yet, she was not originally told the truth about why his authority was passed on to her. Yet this scandal isn’t limited to the Pentagon’s negligent secrecy. How is it possible that the White House had no idea Austin was hospitalized for days? Why isn’t Joe Biden talking to Austin daily?
Austin’s secrecy is inexcusable, but it’s downright incompetence that no one in the White House knew for days. Given the state of the world right now, Biden should be talking to his defense secretary at least daily.
Related: The White House Is Trying to Cover up the Real Scandal of Austin’s Absence
The White House had enough to deal with, trying to contain this scandal, that it didn’t need another one on top of it, but that’s what they got. Based on new information from Georges Bergès, the shady art gallerist, the Biden White House appears to have lied about having established an ethics agreement regarding the sale of Hunter Biden's so-called art.
“Well, I can tell you that after careful consideration, a system has been established that allows for Hunter Biden to work in his profession within reasonable safeguards,” former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed in July 2021 in response to a question about Hunter Biden’s artwork. “Of course, he has the right to pursue an artistic career, just like any child of a President has the right to pursue a career. But all interactions regarding the selling of art and the setting of prices will be handled by a professional gallerist, adhering to the highest industry standards. And any offer out of the normal course would be rejected out of hand.”
Despite claims of anonymity of buyers, Biden not only knew who purchased his work, but they were mostly Democrat donors.
"Hunter Biden’s gallerist never had any communication with the White House about such an agreement to make sure there was any sort of ethics compliance at all, and he provided information to the committee revealing how Hunter Biden’s amateur art career is an ethics nightmare," House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement after Bergès testified before Congress. "The vast majority of Hunter Biden’s art has been purchased by Democrat donors, one of whom was appointed by President Biden to a prestigious commission after she purchased Hunter Biden’s art for tens of thousands of dollars shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration. The White House has a lot of explaining to do about misleading the American people."
This opens up a whole new can of worms for the Biden administration, as it shows that Hunter Biden's selling of influence with his father has never stopped. Not only did one of the buyers of Hunter Biden's artwork get a prestigious appointment, she is also the great-aunt of the first American hostage to be released from Gaza — which raises questions about how that may have inappropriately played a role in Biden's negotiations.
We're not even two weeks into 2024, and Joe Biden has added two new scandals to his seemingly endless list of them. If Biden was hoping that 2024 would be a fresh start to change the course of his political situation, well, to put it mildly, it's not going well.
