With China’s spy balloon crossing the American heartland unmolested and GOP leaders simultaneously starting probes of his family’s corruption, Joe Biden is entering a new phase of his presidency. The worst case scenario is that all his chickens are coming home to roost.
The spy balloon’s appearance and that of two additional objects shot down by the military oddly highlight the importance of the House probes. The possibility that Biden has been compromised by profiting from son Hunter’s lucrative foreign entanglements, especially with China, is drawing extra attention to how the president reacts to the Communist regime’s aggressive surveillance.
So far, his weak-tea response is raising even more suspicions. In fact, it’s fair to say he has done or said nothing that would allay concerns and everything to aggravate them.
It started with his administration’s bizarre radio silence as the balloon crossed over Alaska and entered mainland airspace. Only after a civilian spotted it over Montana did the White House acknowledge what it knew all along.
Later it emerged the president and his team played hush-hush because they didn’t want a dispute with China to get in the way of a planned visit there by Secretary of State Tony Blinken.
File that one under appeasement. The visit was canceled only out of embarrassment, but it’s not clear if Blinken planned to condemn the balloon or simply pretend it didn’t happen. My bet is on the latter.
Who’s in charge here?
Worse, even after the White House acknowledged the balloon, officials allowed it to mosey eastward for four more days, no doubt sucking up vital information, before the Air Force finally shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, Feb. 4. It was then that Biden took credit for giving the shoot-down order the previous Wednesday, but said the military decided to wait until it was over water to avoid civilian ground casualties.
Who’s in charge here? And what did China gain by that four-day delay?
It’s also instructive that among the White House’s first lines of defense was a claim from an anonymous source to favored media that similar balloons surveilled America during the Trump years. When the former president and top officials in his White House insisted the claim was false, the Pentagon “clarified” that objects it previously marked as unidentified were now deemed to be balloons.
The lack of clarity — and honesty — led to expectations Biden would give the incident extended attention in last last Tuesday’s State of the Union speech. Some analysts predicted he would focus on it early as a sign of strength and aim to create a bipartisan show of unity.
Instead, he waited until late in the evening and then, without mentioning the balloon directly, declared that “if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.”
Really? Is it protecting America’s sovereignty to allow an adversary a full week of unhindered spying? It’s safe to say China will not return the favor.
Two days later, in an interview with Telemundo, Biden took a new approach, insisting the incident was “not a major breach.”
Huh? Even top Democrats are not buying that view as they join Republicans in demanding more information.
Meanwhile, the GOP probes into the Biden family business are directly aimed at the “big guy.” Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, head of the Oversight panel, repeated his vow to investigate the president’s role and whether it “occurred at the expense of American interests.”
Comer, in a Post op-ed, also drew a possible connection to the growing pile of classified documents turning up in Biden’s homes and offices, asking: “Did foreign business partners, through Hunter Biden, have access to these improperly stored documents?”
His demand that Hunter turn over records about the foreign deals was swiftly rejected by Hunter’s legal team. Absent a settlement, expect a subpoena followed by a long court fight.
For his part, the president professed not to be worried about the probes.
The media narrative
In an interview with PBS anchor Judy Woodruff, he said “The public is not going to pay attention to that.”
He added that the country wants the GOP House to act on public problems but “If the only thing they can do is make up things about my family, it’s not going to go very far.”
My first reaction was amazement that he was baiting the bear by accusing the GOP of spinning tall tales when there is so much compelling evidence the president was in on the schemes.
On second thought, I realized Biden’s answer wasn’t so much a challenge to Comer as it was a statement of faith that Big Media and Big Tech would shield him again, just as they did when The Post broke the laptop story in 2020. Woodruff’s softball approach on PBS was typical.
Instead of asking smart questions about the evidence that implicates the president, she briefly summarized the probes as being about “access” before asking, “How do you plan to deal with that?”
That’s a lap dog at work. Unfortunately, she’s like the vast bulk of the Washington press corps. Consumed with “optics” and how something “plays,” their questions often make them sound like amateur campaign advisers.
Consider that even though they belatedly admitted Hunter’s laptop is authentic, The New York Times, Washington Post and others have not taken the logical next step of pursuing the numerous exchanges mentioning the president.
Nor has there been much media interest in following up with Tony Bobulinski, the ex-family partner who first exposed Joe as the secret “big guy” in a China deal.
Rather, on the rare occasions when they even refer vaguely to any evidence, Woodruff types inevitably downgrade them as Republican charges. That way, they slyly echo Dems’ talking points that the allegations are just crazy conspiracy theories that prove the GOP can’t be trusted with power.
The result is that Comer, Rep. Jim Jordan and other GOP inquisitors will have to break through the Praetorian Guard to get the public’s attention. It can be done if they find enough evidence, but polls show it won’t be easy.
Many in US tuned out
While 72% of all respondents told Fox News last December it is important to investigate Hunter’s foreign businesses, only 39% think he committed a crime and 31% say he did something unethical but not illegal.
The results are similar for Joe Biden: 35% believe he committed a crime, with 27% thinking he acted unethically but not illegally.
However, among Democrats only, the numbers are much more lopsided. Just 11% believe Hunter did something illegal, and only 8% believe Joe did, Fox reported.
Those numbers take on an added dimension when you remember that most people who work in media and tech companies are committed Democrats. Their duel affiliation is no secret to the White House, which helps explain the president’s confidence he and his family will beat the rap.
