You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time — that’s the old adage attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and try as he might, Old Joe Biden hasn’t been able to disprove it. He may have some true believers on the farthest fringes of the far Left fooled into thinking that he is competent and in command, and he may take in some distracted and uninformed ordinary Americans with his folksy Lunchbucket Joe act, but increasing numbers of people at all points on the political spectrum see the supposed president for the corrupt, mendacious, self-serving apparatchik that he is.
That includes the Chinese Communists, who on Wednesday published a scathing dismissal of Old Joe’s State of the Union address in their propaganda organ Global Times. The State of the Union address, said the ChiComs, was just Joe’s “self-promotion.” Hey, when they’re right, they’re right.
Global Times did get a few things wrong. Most notably, it claimed that Biden “gave his second State of the Union address with the purpose to unite the country,” when actually, just the opposite was true: Biden took office claiming that he wanted to unite the country, but instead has indulged repeatedly in the most divisive rhetoric any American president has ever used.
As The Sumter Gambit: How the Left Is Trying to Foment A Civil War explains, Biden has repeatedly moved in both word and deed to do something none of his predecessors ever dared to do: rule his principal opponent and half of the electorate outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse and allow only one point of view, that of his own party and political allies, to be enunciated within the public square. In light of those efforts, Old Joe Biden stands as the most divisive president in American history. Unifying the country is the last thing on his mind, if anything can truly be said to be on his mind at all.
The Chinese government mouthpiece was spot-on, however, when it noted that “the State of the Union speech, on the whole, is Biden’s self-promotion.” Biden, according to the Global Times, “wanted to tout his ‘accomplishments,’” and yes, they put “accomplishments” inside ironic quotation marks. In Beijing as well as all over the United States, they know that Old Joe, beyond all the puffery and lies, has no accomplishments at all.
Global Times picked up on the Left’s unctuous and cynical posturing about being the guardians of “our democracy” against “insurrectionists.” It noted that “the message that Biden’s team wanted to convey to voters is choosing Biden to secure a democratic and better-guaranteed future.” Yes, that’s right: choosing Biden will secure a “democratic” future if you like elections decided by gerrymandering, ballot harvesting, conveniently faulty voting machines, and the like. As far as Old Joe and his henchmen are concerned, it isn’t “democracy” if his guys lose. And they’re doing all they can to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Meanwhile, “although Biden attempted to paint a rosy picture to Americans, many of his ambitious plans, such as bringing back manufacturing, are facing various difficulties.” Indeed, and there are numerous reasons for that, not least the fact that Biden’s handlers really aren’t committed to building up American manufacturing at all. It’s just a rhetorical pose for the purposes of “self-promotion,” a guise to be discarded when it comes time actually to formulate policy.
Global Times even stated that Biden was presenting “an updated version of former president Donald Trump’s ‘America first’ and isolationism, prioritizing the US domestic needs over interests of the international community.” The difference is that Trump meant it all the way through, while Old Joe stopped being America First the moment the cameras were turned off.
Related: Biden’s Worst Lies From the State of the Union
Most Americans aren’t buying Biden’s fanciful claims and pro-American posturing: “A Washington Post-ABC News poll also suggested that contrary to Biden’s self-assessment for his first two years — it found 62 percent of Americans think Biden has accomplished ‘not very much’ or ‘little or nothing’ during his presidency.” In fact, most Americans didn’t even bother to look in on what Old Joe was serving up: according to the Associated Press, “An estimated 27.3 million people watched President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on television, the second smallest audience for the annual event in at least 30 years.”
It makes sense. Why would anyone want to watch an addled old man hector us and shout at us about how we don’t appreciate all the magnificent things he falsely claims to have done? Those who did watch mostly did so out of grim necessity. Biden’s “self-promotion” just doesn’t appeal to Americans, which is why the rumblings about replacing him are only going to grow louder among the Democrats.
