Does Joe Biden have too many candles on his birthday cake? Yup. But is he an anti-American traitor who beds down with the enemy? Nope. That’s the other guy.
We need some serious perspective about this age thing. It ain’t great that Biden forgets random stuff, but it’s light-years worse that Donald Trump is inviting Vladimir Putin to invade Europe. The traitorous criminal defendant always remembers who butters his bread.
At a Saturday afternoon rally, Trump wowed his saps with a rant about NATO, the western alliance that has successfully policed the postwar international world. He has long stuffed his addled head with the fiction that NATO’s members need to pay America for protection; in truth, they’re supposed to spend two percent of their GDP on their own militaries. And the money issue is irrelevant anyway, because the principle of collective defense is encoded in NATO’s Article V: “An armed attack against one or more (members) in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”
NATO is designed to deter Russian expansionism; for decades it has succeeded. Putin has long lusted to destroy NATO; his useful idiot, Trump, is vowing to destroy NATO. Even your basic MAGA dolt should be able to connect those dots – if not for the sick fact that whatever Trump spews is deemed to be golden. Which brings us to the Saturday afternoon rally, where Trump, in obeisance to Putin, trumpeted the phony money issue. He did it while recalling a past conversation he supposedly had with one of our allies:
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and were attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?…No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.’ You gotta pay! You gotta pay your bills!”
That should’ve been a page one headline in our top Sunday newspapers: The likely Republican presidential nominee is signaling to the Russian enemy that they should “do whatever the hell they want” with America’s NATO allies. Gee, that seems kind of important – certainly more than Biden’s senior moments. Because at least Biden remembers that he’s loyal to the United States of America.
But, naturally, not a syllable of Trump’s Saturday remarks made page one on Sunday morning. The Washington Post didn’t mention it. Nor did The New York Times, which instead (oh so predictably) ran a top-of-the-page story about Biden’s cognition, and festooned it with this sub-headline: “Biden Is Hurt by Flubs More Than Trump Is.”
It’s clear, yet again, that the mainstream media has learned nothing since 2016, that it still hasn’t retooled its “both sides” traditions, that it still hasn’t figured out how to cover an anti-American autocrat who parades his pro-Russian intentions in plain sight. Trump’s deranged remarks on a wide range of issues are umpteen times more malignant than Biden’s occasional “flubs” with a name or a date, but thanks to the mainstream media’s knee-jerk determination to be Just As Tough on Biden, the cult leader continues to coast.
David French, an attorney and sane conservative, wrote this morning: “NATO’s ultimate goal is relatively simple, but vital to the entire human race – to keep the gates of hell closed…And now a corrupt and obviously mentally decaying reality-television star threatens to crack open those terrible gates. I have concerns about Joe Biden, but no matter his condition next term, one thing I do know: He will not endanger America by destroying our most vital alliance.”
By the way, if “flubs” are so important, Trump is a veritable font. In a Pennsylvania rally on Friday night, he repeatedly mixed up Joe Biden with Barack Obama; he said that if he loses the race, Democrats will rename the state of Pennsylvania; and he literally didn’t know what day it was. He said, “Nice Saturday afternoon!” It was Friday night.
One other thing. Did you catch the last line in Trump’s anti-NATO rant? (“You gotta pay your bills!”) That’s funny, coming from a guy who infamous for not paying his bills, who made a living in Atlantic City by stiffing small contractors, and who still hasn’t paid all his lawyers (in a bankruptcy hearing last week, Rudy Giuliani said he’s owed $2 million). I’ve sampled the insufficient coverage of Trump’s NATO remarks and I’ve yet to find one that mentions his hypocrisy about paying bills.
We’re stuck with an asymmetrical campaign that pits an aging but decent pro-American against an aging demagogue pledged to a hostile foreign leader with expansionist ambitions. The coverage needs to reflect this tragic reality.