Well, 2024 hasn’t exactly started off well for the Biden administration. With two fresh scandals and Hunter Biden’s looming contempt vote in Congress, it’s been kind of a disaster, really.
And we’re not even two weeks into the new year. I wonder what the next scandal will be.
I’m sure we won’t have to wait long.
The biggest scandal facing the administration right now, of course, is the secret absence of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who kept the Pentagon, Congress, and the White House in the dark about his hospitalization.
The White House has been doing its part to make this scandal solely about Austin and his lack of transparency, but what really made the situation even worse was the fact that Joe Biden, the man who plays the president on television, had no idea Austin was missing in action. With everything going on in the world right now, there is no excuse for the president of the United States to not be talking to his Defense Secretary daily, yet he wasn’t speaking to him for at least four days, though it was likely longer.
Austin may have accepted full responsibility for his lack of transparency, but that doesn’t change the fact that something is horribly wrong with the Biden administration. The White House promptly sought to take the spotlight off the lack of communication between Biden and his Defense Secretary and called for a review of protocols of all cabinet departments.
The proper thing to do would have been for Joe Biden to fire Secretary Austin. At the very least, it would have been a good cover for the White House to prove they are taking the gravity of the situation seriously. This was never going to happen, of course, because Austin is one of Joe Biden’s key affirmative action picks. As the first black Secretary of Defense, Austin isn’t about to be fired.
Accountability was never coming for Lloyd Austin. So, it’s no surprise that National Security Council spokesman John Kirby revealed on Friday that Austin will remain as Secretary of Defense.
Related: Now Democrats Are Accusing Joe Biden of Impeachable Offenses
“We’re all going to learn from this event,” Kirby told MSNBC. “But the defense secretary’s going to stay in office. The president has full faith and confidence in him.”
Biden personally confirmed his confidence in Austin while in Pennsylvania.
"Do you have confidence in Secretary Austin?” a reporter asked him.
“I do.”
"Was it a lapse in judgment for him not to tell you earlier?"
“Yes,” he admitted.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Joe Biden has full confidence in Secretary Austin. Biden’s administration has never been one to hold anyone accountable for failure — certainly not a minority. No one was ever held accountable for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, either.
When Joe Biden took office, the message from the media was that the era of chaos was over and the adults were finally back in charge. But, time and time again, the message we get from this administration is that the adults are nowhere to be found. With unchecked inflation, the supply chain crisis, the border crisis, and so much more, there’s little reason to be confident in this administration’s governance.
