Jerusalem's oldest photographs
Shortly after the invention of photography, pioneering photographic artists traveled to the Holy Land to capture images of the biblical landscape. Until then, most Bible readers had only imagined what Israel might look like. This began to change around 180 years ago.
Jerusalem Day is a national holiday that commemorates the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, following the Six-Day War. The holiday is marked by public events, parades, and even special prayer services.
05-26-2024 David Bernstein, the?University Professor?and the Executive Director of the Liberty & Law Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, flags a interesting paper (take link in Bernstein's abstract) by Fordham U political scientist Jeffrey Cohen on who are antisemites.
Watch Professor David E. Bernstein in action
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The Volokh ConspiracyMostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
It's probably not who you think, by David Bernstein
I happened across this very interesting and provocative paper by Fordham political scientist Jeffrey Cohen. [ [email protected] ]
Cohen starts by noting the two dominant theories of antisemitism and poltiical ideology in the United States.
The upshot is that the least antisemitic Americans are mainstream liberals and conservatives. The most antisemitic are the extreme left, the extreme right, as one of the theories noted above suggests, but also low information voters, who skew survey results by often self-identifying as "moderate."
Cohen's explanation for these results is interesting.
He argues that the mainstream elite in the US has been philo-semitic since the 1950s. People who have mainstream political views and take their cues from mainstream sources follow that mainstream consensus. But those who take their cues and get their news elsewhere are, obviously, less influenced by this consensus and thus much more likely to hold antisemitic views. This includes far leftists and far rightists, but also, crucially, people of inchoate ideology who are alienated from the mainstream.
What is the meaning of the word inchoate?
Cohen doesn't get into this, but the upshot isn't a happy one for American Jews. Increasing numbers of Americans don't trust the "establishment" and take their cues and get their news from extremists or demagogues just looking for clicks. Consider how many young people rely on TikTok, of all things, for information. This helps explain the rise in antisemitism in recent years. It also helps explains why so many Jews were intuitively uncomfortable with Trump and his blowing up of the Republican mainstream, which has indeed helped cause a rise in antisemitic nonsense proliferating on the right (I'm looking at you Candace Owens).
It's also why Biden's failure to articulate and implement a defense of the Democratic mainstream from the far left has left many Jews –especially many Jewish liberals who find themselves under attack in Progressive circles that seek to exclude "Zionists"– extremely uneasy.
I suspect, though, that Trump and Biden are more symptoms than causes.
The establishment, often (but not always) for good reasons, lost the faith of large swathes of the American public. And it's not clear what the "mainstream" is anymore in the current media environment.
Further evidence, I suppose, for Frankin Foer's thesis that the golden age of American Jews is ending.
David Bernsteinis the?University Professor?and the Executive Director of the Liberty & Law Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University.?
06-04-2024 Algemeiner: Israel Says Biden Omitted Key Detail From Gaza Ceasefire Plan
The authorship of the ceasefire plan presented by Biden has been murky.?
Biden has presented it both as Israel's plan and his plan.? So which is it??
The alternatives are mutually exclusive.
The Algemeiner cast some light on the plan's authorship and, in doing so, uncovers a disturbing (inconvenient) fact.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that US President Joe Biden had disclosed only part of the proposal aimed at achieving a ceasefire in Gaza and securing the release of Israeli hostages, and added that he had not agreed to end Israel’s military operations against Hamas.
“The proposal contains more details that Biden did not mention,” Netanyahu was cited in Israeli media reports as saying at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
“Biden omitted one crucial detail regarding the second stage” of the deal, Netanyahu said. “Israel didn’t agree to end the war, but only to ‘discuss’ its end,” Netanyahu said, adding that such a discussion would occur after the hostages were returned and “only on our terms.”
“Despite what President Biden said, the number of hostages that will be released in the first phase has not yet been agreed upon.There are many details in the deal, and the war will not end without us achieving all of our objectives. We will not give up on absolute victory,” he said
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Hours after Netanyahu charged Biden with omitting key elements of the deal, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters:
“We’re confident that [Biden’s speech] accurately reflects that proposal — a proposal that we worked with the Israelis on, so I know of no gaps to speak of.”
Kirby said that Biden’s decision to disclose details about the deal was “about putting some public pressure on Mr. [Yahya] Sinwar and Hamas, who have repeatedly refused to accept what Israel has put forward.”
“We don’t typically go through the details of these kinds of proposals,” Kirby said. “But in this case, given where we are, given how much longer the hostages have now been held, given the fact that Hamas has reneged on several past occasions, on proposals that were sent to them, and given the fact that the Israelis really did work hard to come up with this proposal, and did so in good faith, the president felt it was important for the first time to publicly lay that out.”
“This wasn’t about jamming the prime minister or the war cabinet,” he said.
What utter BS.? Either Biden did what he did purposely or it is another example of Biden being asspecial counsel Robert Hur described Biden as?a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory", when he decided not to charge Biden with unauthorized possession of classified material.? This was done for political reasons, not to put pressure on Sinwar but to jam up Netanyahu. As I wrote in a prior email:
Bibi is between a rock and a hard place.? Either he accepts his own ceasefire proposal or he loses his coalition. Either way Biden wins. My guess is that Biden really wants the latter. Through proxies, like Schumer the Shomer, he has been pushing for Netanyahu's ouster.? If achieved, and Biden gets his handpicked successor, Benny Gantz, there will be a ceasefire.? It's a twofer.
It's all about Dearborn votes and the pro-Hamas protests in the streets and on the campuses.? Wait until the DNC convention in Chicago and the possibility of a replay of Chicago '68.
Under these circumstances, can the US, under Biden, be an honest broker when it changes the terms previously accepted by one side and presents the omission as accepted?
Jared Silverman, E-mail:?? [email protected]
So... what was happening in 1968, the year I left Cuba ALONE at the age of 14?
Take a look back at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago
1968 Democratic National Convension: Lessons Learned
Israel Says Biden Omitted Key Detail From Gaza Ceasefire Plan, No Long-Term Truce With Hamas in Power
The Algemeiner, June 3, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that US President Joe Biden had disclosed only part of the proposal aimed at achieving a ceasefire in Gaza and securing the release of Israeli hostages, and added that he had not agreed to end Israel’s military operations against Hamas.
“The proposal contains more details that Biden did not mention,” Netanyahu was cited in Israeli media reports as saying at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
“Biden omitted one crucial detail regarding the second stage” of the deal, Netanyahu said. “Israel didn’t agree to end the war, but only to ‘discuss’ its end,” Netanyahu said, adding that such a discussion would occur after the hostages were returned and “only on our terms.”
“Despite what President Biden said, the number of hostages that will be released in the first phase has not yet been agreed upon. There are many details in the deal, and the war will not end without us achieving all of our objectives. We will not give up on absolute victory,” he said.
In a speech on Friday, Biden disclosed that a day earlier, a new three-phase Israeli proposal for a hostage deal was passed onto Hamas through Qatar and detailed some of its main terms.
Biden said the deal would “bring all the hostages home, ensure Israel’s security, create a better day after in Gaza without Hamas in power, and set the stage for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
There is widespread dissatisfaction among senior Israeli officials who feel Biden’s remarks lacked specifics on how the stated goal of dismantling Hamas would be accomplished, fueling criticism that the US president misrepresented the full scope of Israel’s uncompromising stance in fully defeating the Palestinian terror group.
“People have unfortunately been led to believe that a permanent ceasefire kicks in without Israel’s conditions being met,” senior Netanyahu adviser Ophir Falk told The Algemeiner.
“The notion that there will be a permanent ceasefire before Hamas’ military and governing capabilities are destroyed and all our hostages are home is a non-starter,” he added.
Hours after Netanyahu charged Biden with omitting key elements of the deal, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters: “We’re confident that [Biden’s speech] accurately reflects that proposal — a proposal that we worked with the Israelis on, so I know of no gaps to speak of.”
Kirby said that Biden’s decision to disclose details about the deal was “about putting some public pressure on Mr. [Yahya] Sinwar and Hamas, who have repeatedly refused to accept what Israel has put forward.”
“We don’t typically go through the details of these kinds of proposals,” Kirby said. “But in this case, given where we are, given how much longer the hostages have now been held, given the fact that Hamas has reneged on several past occasions, on proposals that were sent to them, and given the fact that the Israelis really did work hard to come up with this proposal, and did so in good faith, the president felt it was important for the first time to publicly lay that out.”
“This wasn’t about jamming the prime minister or the war cabinet,” he said.
The far-right flank of Netanyahu’s governing coalition has sworn to collapse the government if a deal falls short of allowing the complete destruction of Hamas, which rules Gaza and launched the ongoing war with its Oct. 7 onslaught across southern Israel.
“This was about laying bare for the public to see how well and how faithfully and how assertively the Israelis came up with a new proposal — how it shows how much they really want to get this done,” Kirby said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Monday confirmed the deaths of four more hostages: Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper, and Nadav Popplewell, all from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Three of the four — Perry, Metzger, and Cooper — appeared in a propaganda video released by Hamas on Dec. 18, in which the hostages urged Netanyahu “not to let us grow old here.”
According to the IDF, the four were murdered in Khan Younis shortly after the video was filmed.
Osnat Perry, the wife of Haim Perry and chairwoman of Nir Oz, released an open letter on Monday to Netanyahu calling on him to make the “moral, courageous, and correct decision” to bring home the hostages.
“The outline of your proposal, as presented this week by the president of the United States, is a sustainable and feasible outline that can put an end to the ongoing suffering that we and our friends from the Western Negev are experiencing,” Perry wrote.
On Oct. 7, Haim saved Osnat’s life by confronting the terrorists, purposefully leading them outside so that she had time to run and hide. A quarter of Nir Oz’s residents were murdered or taken as hostages to Gaza.
06-04-2024:
Newton's Third Law of Motion - Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.
Is there a corresponding law in the political world?,
i.e. Whenever one political ideology exerts a force on another body politic, the body politic creates an equal and opposite political ideology to counter the first.? Call it Silverman's Law of Political Reaction.
This a variant of the Hegelian dialectic - thesis and antithesis (counter-thesis).
But with Hegel, this would lead to synthesis, which in its own right would be a thesis, starting the dialect all over.
In the case of Silverman's Law of Political Reaction, there are shorthand, street names, backlash and pushback, concepts implicit in the title of Ayn Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged.
Here is a case study. This is Gay Pride Month. In NYC, Pride and Trans flags and banners are everywhere, being the PC/woke/progressive thing to do. But here are examples of Silverman's Law. Gotta love the creativity behind the first one.
Idaho bar goes viral after declaring 'Heterosexual Awesomeness Month'
One bar in Eagle, Idaho is going viral after it announced it was celebrating "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month" in June.
The Old State Saloon posted on Wednesday that it would be kicking off its first salute to heterosexuality with discounts and free beer for couples and men, in a bit of counter-programming to June being widely recognized as Pride month for LGBT people.
"June will be OSS’s inaugural Heterosexual Awesomeness Month! Come join us all month to celebrate heterosexuals, for without them, none of us would be here! Each Monday will be Hetero Male Monday and any heterosexual male dressed like a heterosexual male will receive a free draft beer. Each Wednesday is Heterosexual couples day and each heterosexual couple will receive 15% off their bill," a Facebook post read.
In an editorial, the NYPost commented:
An Idaho bar, the Old State Saloon, has caused a stir with a cheeky promotional idea: drink specials for straight guys, gals and couples all through June.?
June, of course, is Pride month for the whole alphabet soup of mix-‘n’-match sex and gender “identities.”??
And the bar, also of course, is engaged in gentle political satire (while hoping to make a few bucks).
Conservative political commentator Seb Gorka has his own idea (and merch), merging Pride with MAGA.? Here is Gorka's Let's Get Biden To Quit shirt.
Let's Get Biden To Quit!
Finally, there is a story which unfortunately affects US defense.
Navy Seals are accused of going woke after pride post sparks backlash- Daily Mail, 6/2/24
New York Post: https://nypost.com/2024/06/02/us-news/navy-seals-mocked-for-going-woke-with-pride-month-post-slap-in-the-face/
Defense bosses found themselves in hot water with Navy Seals vets after marking the start of June with a Facebook post celebrating the beginning of Pride Month.
The post on the official page of Naval Special Warfare Command was also posted to the US Navy Seals and SWCC page, according to Libs of TikTok.
It spelled out the watchwords of 'dignity, service, respect, equality, pride', in rainbow-colored letters emblazoned with the command's badge of an eagle gripping a rifle and a trident.
Attempts to restrict those who could comment failed to stem a wave of hostile reaction who accused the elite unit of going 'woke' and betraying its former members.
'This woke s*** is like a cancer and needs to be handled and dealt with as a threat to national security,' wrote one. 'Gone way too far.'
Others were infuriated by the timing, pointing out that the post was uploaded immediately after one recognizing the 80th anniversary on June 6 of the D-Day landings in which 2,500 Americans died.*
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The controversial post came on the day the Department of Defense made an embarrassing gaffe with a Facebook post that appeared to confuse Pride Month with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Month.
'June is PTSD Awareness Month and the DoD is committed to supporting service members and veterans affected by PTSD,' it wrote.
'If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available. You are not alone.'
But the post was illustrated with a 'Progress Pride Flag' and attached to a picture captioned 'Celebrate Pride Month 2024'.
The Pentagon deemed June to be PTSD Awareness Month in June 2014, a year before it recognized June as Pride Month.
The post was later deleted and replaced with a PTSD Awareness Month graphic.
OMG.? If the generals and admirals at the Pentagon cannot distinguish between Gay Pride and PTSD, how can they make national security and battlefield decisions?? We may lose militarily to China but keep your chin up because we are woke.
There is no Chinese equivalent for "woke". 醒了 [Xǐngle] means "woke up".? 政治正確 [Zhèngzhì shàng de zhèngquè] means "political correctness".
Jared Silverman, E-mail:?? [email protected] ?
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Idaho bar goes viral after declaring 'Heterosexual Awesomeness Month'
The Old State Saloon made the announcement ahead of Pride Month, by Lindsay Kornick, June 3, 2024
One bar in Eagle, Idaho is going viral after it announced it was celebrating "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month" in June.
The Old State Saloon posted on Wednesday that it would be kicking off its first salute to heterosexuality with discounts and free beer for couples and men, in a bit of counter-programming to June being widely recognized as Pride month for LGBT people.
"June will be OSS’s inaugural Heterosexual Awesomeness Month! Come join us all month to celebrate heterosexuals, for without them, none of us would be here! Each Monday will be Hetero Male Monday and any heterosexual male dressed like a heterosexual male will receive a free draft beer. Each Wednesday is Heterosexual couples day and each heterosexual couple will receive 15% off their bill," a Facebook post read.
In the comments, the bar also advertised for a judge "to determine if men's chosen clothing is officially heterosexual." It offered a $15 per hour salary along with free beer.
Later posts revealed that the bar was getting negative comments over the announcement, particularly for trying to counter the LGBTQ-themed "Pride Month."
"It seems as though people who are against Heterosexual Awesomeness Month have a hard time commenting without using horrific words, expletives, using the name of the Lord in vain, etc. Make an intelligent comment and stay. Cuss and you are banned. Thanks. We’ve banned about 25 already," one of the bar’s comments read days after the post.
Old State Saloon reiterated on Friday that it would proceed and announced a "Her Hetero Happy Hour" for women and "Hetero Awesomeness T-shirts."
"We hear lots of people are upset about Heterosexual Awesomeness Month! Please know:?
Old State Saloon owner Mark Fitzpatrick called out critics of "Heterosexual Awesomeness Month." (Google Earth)
In a comment to Fox News Digital, Old State Saloon owner Mark Fitzpatrick said, "It's my dream to build a community event center on some nearby land I own to help support conservative ideals. We've received?so many truly evil comments from the extreme LGBTQ+ crowd.? Some of the comments are truly horrific. But, there's also been so much support!"
On his Zillow page, Fitzpatrick described himself as a "Christian, conservative, Constitution supporter, retired police officer, and family man." The Old Stage Saloon Facebook page also featured promotions for conservatives such as "Open Carry Coffee" and "Christian Singles Mingle."
Fitzpatrick later responded to what he considered a hit piece against him by the Idaho Statesman about the month.
"Because most Idahoans will see this dog whistle for what it is. Old State Saloon is promoting intolerance. It’s putting the ‘trans’ in transparent bigotry. This marketing gimmick is an insecure reaction to LGBTQ+ Pride Month, the annual celebration for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride in June," the piece read.
Fitzpatrick wrote on the Old State Saloon Facebook page, "Idaho Statesman writes a hit piece on me and Old State Saloon?and doesn't even have the courage to call me for a quote. Michael Deeds is a decently talented writer. Too bad so much of it is just so immoral. Viewer discretion advised."?
He continued, "And for the record, I love all types of people, including the LGBTQ+ crowd.?I sincerely wish they all knew Jesus as their savior. Now, let's commence Heterosexual Awesomeness Month!"
Deeds didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Time: ‘We Are the World Power.’ How Joe Biden Leads
Joe Biden sits down with Time magazine for a 35 minute interview. Is it a "puff" piece?? AllSides Media Bias Rating for Time is that it leans Left. Read the entire article below.?
I am interested how Time describes Biden in the article. Remember when former special counsel Robert Hur decided not to charge Biden with unauthorized possession of classified material, he described Biden as?a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory"? Here are parts of the article which relate more to demeanor, deportment and competence.
Jared Silverman, E-mail:?? [email protected]
TIME
‘We Are the World Power.’ How Joe Biden Leads
Massimo Calabresi / Washington, June 4, 2024
Joe Biden makes his way through the West Wing telling stories. In the Cabinet Room, with sun pouring through French doors from the Rose Garden outside, he remembers the first time he sat around the long mahogany table, its high-backed leather chairs ordered by seniority. It was more than 50 years ago, Biden says, and Richard Nixon told National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to brief the 30-year-old first-term Delaware Senator on the still secret timing of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Walking slowly through the halls, the President unspools anecdotes about heads of state: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron. In the Oval Office, he talks about his childhood home in Scranton, Pa., and the 2008 phone call from Barack Obama asking Biden to be his running mate.
Biden recounts these memories over the course of more than 90 minutes on a warm spring day, speaking in a quiet, sometimes scattershot way. The impression he gives is one of advancing age and broad experience, of a man who has lived history. Biden leads the U.S. as the American century is fading into an uncertain future, a changing world of threats, opportunities, and power shifts. At 81, he holds fast to a vision that has reigned since World War II, in which a rich and powerful America leads an alliance of democracies to safeguard the globe from tyranny.
On June 6, Biden will travel to Normandy, France, to memorialize an event that has served for eight decades as a focal point of this vision. He will arrive as the 12th—and certainly the last—American President who was alive on that day in 1944, when 73,000 American troops led the largest amphibious invasion in human history, accelerating Nazi Germany’s defeat and Europe’s liberation. For generations, D-Day has been a hallowed anniversary. The President says commemorating it is as much about the future as the past. “We’re playing [that role] even more,” Biden says. “We are the world power.”
Whether this view of America’s role in the world will outlast Biden’s presidency is an open question. Voters face a clear choice this November. Biden calls America’s democratic values the “grounding wire of our global power” and its alliances “our greatest asset.” His presumptive opponent, former President Donald Trump, called for withdrawing American forces in Europe and Asia and has promised, most recently in his April 12 interview with TIME, to cut loose even our closest allies if they don’t do as he tells them. By his own account, Trump sees all countries as unreliable, the relations between them transactional. That sentiment has spread throughout a Republican Party that once championed America’s values abroad. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Senator in contention to become Trump’s Vice President, tells TIME that the D-Day story has become a sepia-toned distraction. “The foreign policy establishment is obsessed with World War II historical analogies,” says Vance, “and everything is some fairy tale they tell themselves from the 1930s and 1940s.”
During his 40 months in office, events have tested Biden’s vision of American world leadership. Alliances haven’t been enough to win a new European war in Ukraine. U.S. power and leverage haven’t prevented a humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East, marked by alleged war crimes. Putin is trying to assemble an axis of autocrats from Tehran to Beijing. In China, the U.S. faces an adversary potentially its equal in economic and military power that is intent on tearing down the American global order. President Xi has told his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, U.S. officials say, raising the possibility of a dark analogue to Normandy in Asia. Biden doesn’t rule out sending troops to defend Taiwan if China attacked, saying, “It would depend on the circumstances.”
Biden’s record in facing these tests is more than just nostalgic talk. He has added two powerful European militaries to NATO, and will soon announce the doubling of the number of countries in the Atlantic alliance that are paying more than the target 2% of their GDP toward defense, the White House says. His Administration has worked to prevent the war in Gaza from igniting a broader regional conflict. He brokered the first trilateral summit with long-distrustful regional partners South Korea and Japan, and coaxed the Philippines to move away from Beijing’s orbit and accept four new U.S. military bases. He has rallied European and Asian countries to curtail China’s economic sway. “We have put together the strongest alliance in the history of the world,” Biden says, so that “we are able to move in a way that recognizes how much the world has changed and still lead.”?
But American Presidents must earn a mandate from their fellow citizens, and it’s far from clear that Biden can. In surveys, large majorities say that he is too old to lead. As he walked TIME through the West Wing and sat for a 35-minute interview on May 28, the President, with his stiff gait, muffled voice, and fitful syntax, cut a striking contrast with the intense, loquacious figure who served as Senator and Vice President. Biden bristles at the suggestion that he is aging out of his job. Asked whether he could handle its rigors though the end of a second term, when he will be 86, he shot back, “I can do it better than anybody you know.” Age aside, Biden’s handling of foreign affairs gets poor marks from voters, and not just for the bungled withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan or the ongoing war in Gaza. While 65% of Americans still believe that the U.S. should take a leading or major role in the world, that number is down 14 points from 2003 and is at its lowest level since Gallup began polling the issue two years earlier.
Biden, who is the most experienced foreign policy President in a generation, believes that role is in America’s interest. “When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they can reach our shores,” he said soon after taking office. To judge the merit of Biden’s plan to sustain American world leadership, voters can look to his record: what he has accomplished, where he has fallen short, and how he intends to build on his work in a second term.
Around 3 p.m. on Dec. 13, 2021, the White House Situation Room put through a call from Biden to his Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinisto. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was still more than two months away, and Finland, with its 830-mile border with Russia and tense history with Moscow, had long declined to join NATO. Less than a quarter of Finns supported entering the alliance at the time. But Biden had decided, aides say, that if Russia invaded, the West’s response should be not just to defend NATO, but to strengthen it.
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On March 4, days after the invasion, Biden met with the newly enthusiastic Niinisto in the Oval Office. Together they called Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, who had resisted joining the alliance, to try to persuade her. After both countries applied for membership in May 2022, Biden turned to getting the rest of NATO to accept them. In June, he called Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan from Air Force One on the way to a summit in Madrid, in hopes of getting Erdogan’s support for expanding the alliance. Dangling a one-on-one meeting, Biden said of Turkey’s long-sought access to America’s F-16 fighter jets, “Let’s find a way to get that done,” according to the White House. By March 2024, Sweden and Finland were in. “Everybody thought, including you guys, thought I was crazy,” Biden says. “Guess what? I did it.”
The accession of Finland and Sweden was part of Biden’s broader efforts to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by rallying the free world. Starting in October 2021, Biden held a series of meetings with European and NATO leaders, discussing postinvasion support for Ukraine, including military assistance, sanctions, diplomacy, and economic support. Biden also brought Asian allies into the effort. South Korea and Japan have imposed sanctions on Russia and its arms suppliers. The result, Biden advisers say, is a strengthened alliance of shared democratic values worldwide. “He has connected Europe and Asia in a way no previous President has,” says National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Others view all the investment in Ukraine as a distraction from the bigger challenge America faces in East Asia. “Who doesn’t think that $200?billion spent in Europe would’ve been incredibly useful in the Pacific?” says Elbridge Colby, a former Trump Administration Pentagon official and lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. “Great nations fail,” says Lieut. General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s former National Security Adviser, when “you fix somebody else’s potholes instead of fixing your potholes.”?
Biden says he remains committed to Ukrainian victory. Asked about the war’s endgame, Biden says, “Peace looks like making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine.” But last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive was a failure. Russia recently has made its largest advances since the opening months of the invasion. Alliance building may have reached its limit, along with Americans’ appetite for funding a war of attrition. Biden’s allies in Kyiv complain he has been too cautious, giving Ukraine enough weapons to survive the war but not to win it. “It’s not a decisive stance,” says a senior official in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. “It’s not the way to victory.”
On balance, however, even longtime critics are impressed with Biden’s efforts in Ukraine. Former Defense Secretary and CIA director Robert Gates wrote in 2014 that Biden had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national-security issue over the past four decades.” But on May?19, Gates said that Biden’s response to Russia’s invasion has gone a long way toward repairing the damage of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. “He gained a lot of credibility with the speed with which he assembled the coalition of partner countries, allies, and friends before, during, and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Gates told CBS’s?Face the Nation.
Biden says his response has been part of a broader deterrence strategy. “If we ever let Ukraine go down, mark my words, you’ll see Poland go, and you’ll see all those nations along the actual border of Russia [fall],” he tells TIME. But in other theaters, the high-minded Normandy vision has given way to a different kind of diplomacy.
Halfway through our interview, Biden responds to a question about America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia by saying that the U.S. has two kinds of alliances: “There are values-based, and there are practical-based.” During the campaign, Biden had sworn to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” One of his first moves in office was to cut off certain arms supplies over the kingdom’s war in Yemen, which has displaced 4.5 million people and killed 377,000, including 11,000 children, according to the U.N. Soon after, the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, met with China’s Foreign Minister and proposed greater cooperation on nuclear energy and security with Beijing, already the kingdom’s largest economic partner.
The Biden Administration quietly pivoted. A new “great game” was afoot, with the world dividing between competing Chinese and American spheres of influence. For all Biden’s efforts to stimulate a green transition, Saudi Arabia was still providing much of the world’s energy. Moreover, the Saudis had expressed willingness during the Trump presidency to normalize relations with Israel, which would tilt the regional balance of power against Iran and in the U.S.’s favor. On Sept.?27, 2021, Sullivan traveled to Saudi Arabia with instructions from Biden to explore the possibility of a peace deal between the kingdom and Israel.
Biden himself traveled to Saudi Arabia in July 2022, bucking a flurry of criticism for meeting with MBS, who has led a widespread crackdown on clerics, academics, and human-rights advocates critical of his regime, according to Human Rights Watch, and who the U.S. says ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But the visit helped stabilize relations. Over the course of the next year, it began to look as if Biden’s moral climb down with MBS had brought the Saudis back on the U.S. side, and restarted a possible bargain with Israel. The outlines of that deal, Biden now says, were “overwhelmingly in our interest.”
Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, was determined not to allow it. Days after its Oct. 7 attack against Israel, which killed some 1,200 people, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told TIME, “We planned for this because Israel thinks it can make peace with anyone, it can make normalization with any country, it can oppress the Palestinians, so we decided to shock the Israelis in order to wake up others.” Eight Americans were among the estimated 240 taken hostage in the massacre. The Biden Administration has sought to secure their release, but it is not clear how many of the American hostages have survived; three reportedly have been killed. “We believe there are those that are still alive,” Biden tells TIME. “I met with all the families. But we don’t have final proof on exactly who’s alive.”
Biden’s reaction to Oct.?7 was to provide rock-solid support to Israel. Within a week he had deployed two aircraft carriers to the region. Quietly, he tried to rally Egypt and Saudi Arabia to resist expansion of the conflict into a war between Israel and Iran. Biden’s “practical-based” alliance building appeared to pay off on April?13, when Iran responded to an Israeli attack on a satellite diplomatic office by launching more than 300 missiles and drones in its first-ever direct attack on Israel. The Saudis and Jordanians reportedly provided intelligence assistance and opened their airspace to U.S. and other jets. With Israel leading the way, the ad hoc alliance managed to shoot down all but four of the projectiles, with no fatalities. More important, the episode helped avert a region-wide war.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has upped the cost of Biden’s commitment to Israel at every turn. Nearly eight months after the conflict started, the death toll in Gaza, according to the local Hamas-led Ministry of Health, has climbed to more than 36,000 people, including an unknown number of Hamas fighters. More than 1.7 million have been displaced by Israeli attacks that have destroyed much of the enclave. On May 20, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested a war-crimes indictment for Netanyahu, his Defense Minister, and three leaders of Hamas. Four days later, in a largely symbolic move, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt operations in Gaza. Human Rights Watch says Israel has “imposed collective punishments on the civilian population, deprived the civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival, and used starvation of civilians as a weapon of war.”
Asked if Israeli forces have committed war crimes in Gaza, Biden says, “It’s uncertain.” From the start, the Administration knew Israel was pushing the limits of legal warfare, the Washington Post and others have reported. The conflict is driving a wedge between the U.S. and its allies. On May 31, Biden laid out a phased cease-fire plan that would end the war and secure the release of hostages. He has continued to pursue the complicated regional deal with Saudi Arabia. Some close to Biden say the only holdout to the broader pact is Netanyahu. The President declines to say as much, but when asked by TIME if Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political reasons, Biden admits, “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”
As aides try to bring the interview to a close, Biden turns to China. Hawks say Beijing is in a sprint to match American economic and military production. By some measures, it is catching up on GDP and defense manufacturing, and already has a larger navy. But Biden takes a bullish view of the competition with the rising Asian power. “Everybody talks about how, how strong China is and how powerful they are,” Biden says. “You’ve got an economy that’s on the brink there. The idea that their economy is booming, give me a break.” That doesn’t mean they can’t pose a threat. Asked if China is using AI or other means to meddle in the upcoming U.S. election, Biden says someone is, but declines to say who. Pressed, he adds, “I think China would have an interest in meddling.”
What Biden describes as China’s economic weakness could make confrontation more, not less, likely—another argument, as he sees it, for expanding America’s alliances in East Asia. And in that arena, the President has pursued a mix of “values-based” and “practical” approaches.
Biden was on Air Force One on his way to a fundraiser in Illinois on May?11, 2022, when the results of the Philippine presidential elections were announced, showing that Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. had won. Biden “had the instinct to just pick up the phone and said, ‘Hey, let’s get together soon and start building a relationship,’” Sullivan says. It was a long shot. Marcos has a pending $2?billion judgment against him in a U.S. court relating to his parents’ human-rights record during their more than 20-year dictatorship, which ended in 1986. The Philippines are now rated “partly free” by Freedom House, and the outgoing President, Rodrigo Duterte, had courted China even as Beijing claimed nearby islands and territorial waters. Marcos had sent cold signals to the U.S. during his campaign.
Biden’s call was the first Marcos had received from a foreign leader. As U.S. officials followed up, they briefed the new President on the parallels between Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Xi’s declared goals in the South China Sea. Biden dispatched Vice President Kamala Harris and his Secretaries of State and Defense to woo Marcos. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman made clear Marcos had diplomatic immunity and would be welcome in the U.S. Less than a year after Biden’s congratulatory call, Marcos made a visit to the White House. More significantly, he approved the opening of four additional U.S. military bases in the Philippines. In April and May, the two countries engaged in their largest military exercises together, simulating an effort to repulse an amphibious landing. “The President got engaged early in a very personal way,” says Sullivan, “and then kind of showed both respect for him and a vision for where the relationship would go.”?
Biden has pursued this brand of personal realpolitik across Asia. He elevated the communist autocracy in Vietnam to the highest diplomatic status, comprehensive strategic partner, and has moved to embrace the increasingly repressive regime of Narendra Modi in India. He has tried to boost the “Quad” alliance with India, Japan, and Australia, upgrading it from a meeting of Foreign Ministers to one of heads of state. In April 2023, Biden convened a Camp David summit with the South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Overcoming long-fraught relations between Seoul and Tokyo, the three countries criticized China’s behavior in the South China Sea and declared “a hinge point of history, when geopolitical competition, the climate crisis, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and nuclear provocations test us.”
Critics say the problem is too much friend?making and not enough deterrence. The U.K. recently said China may be preparing to provide lethal aid to Russia, a move that Biden said in March 2022 would put Xi “in significant jeopardy” of harsh U.S. sanctions. “The single biggest problem with the Biden team is their failure to grasp what it takes to achieve effective deterrence against aggressors,” says Matt Pottinger, who was Deputy National Security Adviser under Trump. “They failed against the Taliban, then Putin, and then Iran and its proxies. And now Beijing is making moves that could prove fateful for the world.” Former Trump official Colby says Biden’s diplomatic work is a weak substitute for the one thing that can deter China’s rise. “These high-profile photo ops,” says Colby, “are not a substitute for raw military power.” He points to recent statements by senior U.S. military officials that China is outpacing the U.S. on missile- and shipbuilding, and war games showing the U.S. losing badly in a contest over Taiwan, and says the U.S. should put all its efforts into defending the “first island chain” of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Biden believes that withdrawing from Europe and the Middle East to focus on East Asia would backfire, aides say. If America abandons its allies elsewhere, they argue, its Asian allies will abandon it, in turn. The U.S. needs European and Middle Eastern countries to increase its economic and military advantages over China. And ultimately, failing to confront instability now—in Ukraine, Gaza or elsewhere—will only make doing so later a more costly distraction from the competition with Beijing.
Back in the Cabinet Room after the interview, the sun is lower, and Biden has more stories. He turns to a sideboard with a commendation from the Kosovo government to his son Beau Biden, who died of cancer nine years ago. The President relates with evident pride his son’s work supporting its judicial system. A mention of diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton accords for the Balkans, elicits a story about Afghanistan and an argument Biden had with Holbrooke over the search for peace there.?
On a matching sideboard on the other side of the door, the President opens an album with travel pictures, launching a series of anecdotes about the Popes he has known, including John Paul II and Benedict, whom Biden calls “the Rottweiler.” Recounting an exchange with one over abortion, he casts an eye toward the cracked door to the Oval Office and asks an aide, “Are they in there?” Turning back to his visitors, he says, “Let me show you one more picture.”
This avuncular politicking remains a Biden trademark, one that has helped with allies overseas but failed to unite Americans at home, as Biden pledged when running for President. Not that he has stopped trying. Biden ultimately persuaded Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to move a roughly $95?billion supplemental aid package for Ukraine, the Middle East, and Taiwan. To build support for his Middle East peace package, he has worked both sides of the aisle. On Nov.?8, 2023, Biden sat for two hours in the windowless Roosevelt Room with a bipartisan group of nine Senators who had just returned from the region, asking for impressions from the trip and moderating a conversation between them, Sullivan, and Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk. At the end, he pulled Democratic Senator Chris Coons and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham into the Oval Office for separate 10-minute conversations about next steps in the effort, says Coons.
Biden may be right that despite the partisanship, a consensus exists for a values-based, pragmatic role for America in the world. His challenge is to get Americans to focus on that rather than on other issues driven by foreign affairs, like inflation or immigration. Biden denies that his expansion of Trump’s trade war with China will increase prices, and says his only regret about lifting Trump’s anti-immigration measures is that he didn’t do it sooner. His goal in a second term, he says, is “to finish what he started.”
At stake is the direction of the world for the coming century. At Normandy, Biden will make the case for what historian Hal Brands says is “the 80-year tradition of internationalism that has been quite good for America and the world.” The alternative, says Brands, would be a “more vicious and chaotic” world where Americans ultimately would be less safe, prosperous, and free, but only after everyone else suffered first.
Wrapping up his conversation with TIME, Biden offers cookies from a tray in the outer Oval. “They’re homemade,” he says. Turning to leave, he offers a final salutation: “Keep the faith.” But then he pauses and turns back, as the phrase triggers one last story. It’s about a relative who had his own response to that admonition. And here Biden taps one of his visitors on the chest and says, “Spread the faith.”
—With reporting by Simon Shuster/Kyiv; Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian/New York; and Melissa August, Brian Bennett, Vera Bergengruen, Eric Cortellessa, and Sam Jacobs/Washington
Mandel [Commentary]: Biden’s Maginot Line
Over at Commentary, Seth Mandel reacts to the Biden interview with Time, just sent.? In five words, "You've got to be kidding."
In my prior email I questioned whether the Time interview was a puff piece.? Mandel says, "The piece presents Biden in as positive a light as possible..."
Generals always prepare to fight the last war, especially if they won it. French Prime Minister George Clemenceau.
Jared Silverman, E-mail:?? [email protected]
COMMENTARY: Biden’s Maginot Line
by Seth Mandel
President Biden’s big interview with Time magazine allows him the space to paint a full picture of the world as he sees it. That picture, in turn, reveals the basic problem with Biden’s management of world affairs as president: He thinks and acts like he’s the secretary of defense, awaiting orders to change strategy when the tide turns against the ship of state.
“We are the world power,” the president tells Time as he explains his belief in the power of alliances. Later in the interview, he says: “We have put together the strongest alliance in the history of the world.”
The president seems to think those two statements mean the same thing. They don’t.
The piece presents Biden in as positive a light as possible, so let’s compare the way the writer admiringly describes Biden’s supposedly muscular multilateralism with its results: “He has added two powerful European militaries to NATO, and will soon announce the doubling of the number of countries in the Atlantic alliance that are paying more than the target 2% of their GDP toward defense, the White House says. His Administration has worked to prevent the war in Gaza from igniting a broader regional conflict. He brokered the first trilateral summit with long-distrustful regional partners South Korea and Japan, and coaxed the Philippines to move away from Beijing’s orbit and accept four new U.S. military bases. He has rallied European and Asian countries to curtail China’s economic sway.”
And what’s the verdict on all that?
According to Time, “Alliances haven’t been enough to win a new European war in Ukraine. U.S. power and leverage haven’t prevented a?humanitarian catastrophe?in the Middle East, marked by alleged war crimes. Putin is trying to assemble an axis of autocrats from Tehran to Beijing. In China, the U.S. faces an adversary potentially its equal in economic and military power that is intent on tearing down the American global order. President Xi has told his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.”
The problem is glaring: The president has almost no capacity to adjust for events.
Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Peace looks like making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine,” Biden says. OK, but according to the State DepartmentRussia occupies not only Crimea (which it took in 2014) but sections of five Ukrainian oblasts. Indeed, despite Ukraine’s recapture of about half of what Russian troops had taken since the war began two years ago, Moscow still controls nearly a fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Perhaps, then, the president means that Russia must not occupy the entirety of Ukraine. “If we ever let Ukraine go down,” Biden tells Time, “mark my words, you’ll see Poland go, and you’ll see all those nations along the actual border of Russia [fall].”
If Biden believes that, he’s got a funny way of showing it.
We see something similar in the Middle East. Biden deserves credit, no doubt, for dropping his earlier disastrous plan to undermine our alliance with Saudi Arabia (and thus the entire Sunni coalition in the region). The same is true for the successful U.S.-led intervention against Iran’s unprecedented missile-and-drone attack against Israel in April, an anti-Iran coalition that involved the mobilization of Arab defenses.
But there’s another way to think about it: A truly successful deterrent alliance would not have been tested by an attack consisting of 300 Iranian ballistic missiles and drone strikes, especially one that was announced in advance.
We’re told Biden’s response to Hamas’s atrocities on Oct. 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, “was to provide rock-solid support to Israel.” But that was then. Now when he’s asked by Time if Israel committed war crimes, Biden says, “It’s uncertain.” And though the war has dragged on for many reasons, at or near the top of that list would have to be Biden’s own choices, his concessions to anti-Israel protesters, and his attempts to appease his party’s progressives. Nevertheless, when asked if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has delayed the war repeatedly at Biden’s request—is prolonging the war for political reasons, Biden responds: “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”
America’s alliances are tested abroad, because our enemies live at a distance. But our friends live at that same distance. And those enemies are their next-door neighbors. Ukraine and Israel have foes right on their border who will forever be trying to kill them. America can “pivot to Asia” or “reset” or adopt some similar concept that can only be fulfilled in isolation. The purpose of “the strongest alliance in the history of the world” is to keep those borders quiet.
Right now Biden’s prized alliance looks like a global Maginot Line—tough on paper but unintimidating in practice. It has failed as a deterrent in the two major tests it has faced. The third test will likely be from China. Without a different approach, don’t expect a different result.
WSJ: Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping
Remember when former special counsel Robert Hur decided not to charge Biden with unauthorized possession of classified material, he described Biden as?a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory"?? This WSJ article does Hur one better in a major story.
When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.
Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
For much of his career, Biden enjoyed a reputation on Capitol Hill for being a master negotiator of legislative deals, known for his detailed knowledge of issues and insights into the other side’s motivations and needs—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on. Over the past year, though, with Republicans in control of the House, that reputation has diminished.?
White House officials dismissed many of the accounts from those who have met with the president or been briefed on those meetings as motivated by partisan politics.?? [But some of the accounts come from Democrats.]
*******
This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.?
The White House kept close tabs on some of The Wall Street Journal’s interviews with Democratic lawmakers. [Controlling the information like the Ministry of Truth.? Democrats had to debrief the White House's equivalent of Stalin's political commissars.] After the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House either a recording of an interview or details about what was asked, some of those lawmakers spoke to the Journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden’s strengths.
The WSJ article goes into detail on some incidents. You can read them below.
Financial disclosure has become part and parcel of campaigning for the presidency and other offices.? Some candidates issue reports on their health.? With regard to the president, shouldn't the candidates physical and mental health, including cognition, be disclosed. Ditto, an annual report on the sitting president. In these times, shouldn't the public be assured that the person, whose finger is on the button, is physically fit and in full possession of their mental faculties?? [For fictional depictions of why this is desireable, see Dr. Strangelove and Dead Zone.]
Jared Silverman, E-mail:?? [email protected]
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping
Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times. The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics.
Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes, 18–22 minutes
WASHINGTON—When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House Republicans to lift the debt ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed to shift from one day to the next, according to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks. On some days, he had loose and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely on notes.
“I used to meet with him when he was vice president. I’d go to his house,” McCarthy said in an interview. “He’s not the same person.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.?
Some who have worked with him, however, including Democrats and some who have known him back to his time as vice president, described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.
For much of his career, Biden enjoyed a reputation on Capitol Hill for being a master negotiator of legislative deals, known for his detailed knowledge of issues and insights into the other side’s motivations and needs—and for hitting his stride when the pressure was on. Over the past year, though, with Republicans in control of the House, that reputation has diminished.?
White House officials dismissed many of the accounts from those who have met with the president or been briefed on those meetings as motivated by partisan politics.?
“Congressional Republicans, foreign leaders and nonpartisan national-security experts have made clear in their own words that President Biden is a savvy and effective leader who has a deep record of legislative accomplishment,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates. “Now, in 2024, House Republicans are making false claims as a political tactic that flatly contradict previous statements made by themselves and their colleagues.”?
This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.?
The White House kept close tabs on some of The Wall Street Journal’s interviews with Democratic lawmakers. After the offices of several Democrats shared with the White House either a recording of an interview or details about what was asked, some of those lawmakers spoke to the Journal a second time and once again emphasized Biden’s strengths.?
“They just, you know, said that I should give you a call back,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, referring to the White House.
Bates, the White House spokesman, said: “We thought it was important that all perspectives be represented” to correct what he said were “false and politically motivated claims.”?
Former President Donald Trump, who at 77 is 3? years younger than Biden, also has faced questions about his mental acuity. Indeed, both candidates have been captured repeatedly on camera slipping up on facts or otherwise botching their public remarks, providing a steady stream of fodder for both Democrats and Republicans to attack the mental capacity of the opposing candidate.
During Biden’s January meeting on Ukraine, the president laid out a forceful case for providing aid, according to administration officials and some participants, who added that using notes in such meetings is common practice. White House spokesman Bates denied that Biden had misspoken during his one-on-one exchange with Johnson in February about energy policy.?
Administration aides familiar with last year’s debt-ceiling negotiations said Biden was effective, that his role was to be above the fray and to provide detailed instructions behind the scenes. They said McCarthy privately told administration officials at the time that he was impressed with Biden’s performance, and that McCarthy suggested as much in public remarks.?
They said the passage of both Ukraine funding and a debt-ceiling increase without major concessions to Republicans shows he succeeded.?
Some who attended the meetings attributed off-key moments to his speech impediment and his tendency to be long-winded. Those who expressed concern about Biden said the behavior they saw suggested an unevenness, not the caricature of an addled leader that some of his political opponents draw. The White House said the president’s doctors have found him fit to serve, and that his recent annual physical showed no need for a cognitive test.
Members of the Biden administration offered numerous examples of other situations that they said showed the president was sharp and engaged, including long hours in the Situation Room in April during and after Iran’s missile attack on Israel, and late nights on the phone with lawmakers from his White House residence.
Voter perceptions about the mental acuity of both candidates are being shaped partly by footage and news coverage of their public slips.
On May 20, during a Rose Garden event celebrating Jewish American Heritage month, Biden said one of the U.S. hostages held in Gaza was a guest at the White House event, before correcting himself. One day earlier, at a campaign event in Detroit, he indicated that he was vice president during the Covid-19 pandemic, which started three years after he left that office. It was one of numerous flubs in the single speech that prompted the White House to make corrections to the official transcript.
In January, he mixed up two of his Hispanic cabinet secretaries, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra. During a February fundraiser in New York, he recounted speaking to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl—who died in 2017—at the 2021 Group of Seven meeting. That same month, at a different fundraiser, he said that during the 2021 G-7 summit he had spoken to former French President Fran?ois Mitterrand, who died in 1996.?
Trump, for his part, mixed up Nikki Haley, a Republican presidential primary opponent, and House speaker emeritus Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, during a January speech. At a rally in Virginia in March, he referred to Biden as Barack Obama when commenting on Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s opinion of U.S. leadership. During his criminal trial in New York in May, he closed his eyes for extended periods.?
After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, there was so much concern over Trump’s mental state that some of his cabinet officials discussed whether there should be a greater check on his power and at least one considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
A Trump spokeswoman said he is “sharp as a tack.”
In a March Wall Street Journal survey of voters in seven battleground states, just 28% said Biden was better suited physically and mentally for the presidency, while 48% picked Trump.
Questions about Biden’s age were amplified in February when Special Counsel Robert K. Hur, who interviewed him for roughly five hours over two days in October during the probe into his handling of classified documents, reported that Biden’s memory had been “significantly limited.” Biden responded in a news conference: “I know what the hell I’m doing.”?
Americans have had minimal opportunities to see Biden in unscripted moments. By the end of April, he had given fewer interviews and press conferences than any of his recent predecessors, according to data collected by Martha Joynt Kumar, an emeritus professor at Towson University. His last wide-ranging town-hall-style meeting with an independent news outlet was in October 2021.
He has had fewer small meetings with lawmakers as his term has gone on, visitor logs show. During his first year in office, even with pandemic restrictions, he held more than three dozen meetings of fewer than 20 lawmakers in the West Wing. That number fell to roughly two dozen in his second year, and about a dozen in his third year.?
Bates, the White House spokesman, said the new Republican-controlled House presented fewer opportunities for a Democratic president to push major legislation.?
Jan. 17, 2024: Ukraine Meeting
With Ukraine running out of munitions, the White House called together top lawmakers to discuss what it would take to get congressional funding, along with the scope of border-security changes demanded by Republicans. The president moved so slowly around the Cabinet Room to greet the nearly two dozen congressional leaders that it took about 10 minutes for the meeting to begin, some people who attended recalled.?
Biden started the meeting reading from notes to make broad points about the need to give money to Ukraine, which struck several participants as odd given that the lawmakers present already generally agreed that more funds were needed. Some attendees had trouble hearing him.
Biden deferred so frequently to other lawmakers that much of the conversation didn’t include him, some people who attended the meeting recalled. When questions came directly to him, he would turn to staffers, they said.?
“You couldn’t be there and not feel uncomfortable,” said one person who attended. “I’ll just say that.”?
Gene Sperling, a top Biden aide who also worked for former presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, said it is standard practice for presidents to read from cards in serious policy meetings with lawmakers. Casey Redmon, a National Security Council official who attended, said Biden turned to aides only twice, deferring one question to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and another to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat who attended, said Biden was “incredibly strong, forceful and decisive.” The White House provided similar statements from two top officials who attended: Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer. Bates, the White House spokesman, said no one in the room said anything at the time about having trouble hearing Biden.
“What you see on TV is what you get,” said Sen. James E. Risch, an Idaho Republican, who attended the meeting but shared only his general impression of meetings with Biden. “These people who keep talking about what a dynamo he is behind closed doors—they need to get him out from behind closed doors, because I didn’t see it.”
Others who attended said Biden’s demeanor and level of engagement fluctuated and he seemed lively and engaged at some points. When the topic moved to an immigration overhaul, Johnson, the House speaker, offered Biden a list of dozens of executive actions he could undo to improve border security. Biden, rather than responding to Johnson’s suggestions, chided him, according to people at the meeting, “I’ve forgotten more about immigration than you’ll ever know.”
Bates, the White House spokesman, characterized Biden’s retort as a “lighthearted comment” about his long experience with immigration policy. Bates said Johnson later publicly described the meeting positively, and that the meeting put Congress on the trajectory to pass Ukraine aid.
Meeks, the New York Democrat, said he didn’t come away from the meeting worried about Biden’s acuity. “I found him to be the same Joe Biden that I’ve known since I came to Congress,” said Meeks, who was elected in 1998.
Feb. 27, 2024: Biden and Johnson
Just after a late-February meeting of House and Senate leaders about military assistance to Ukraine, Biden pulled aside Johnson for a chat about funding and what it would take to bring the matter to a House vote.?
Johnson brought up a new administration energy policy that halts future permits for shipping LNG to many countries, including in Europe, while the climate, economic and national-security impact of those exports are studied. The policy fanned concern that the ban would scuttle new projects and ultimately force U.S. allies to import more from energy-rich adversaries like Russia. The policy also affects several multibillion-dollar projects in Johnson’s home state of Louisiana by denying them, for now, key export permits.
“Mr. President, you are helping Vladimir Putin,” Johnson told the president, according to one of the people briefed on the exchange. Biden said that wasn’t true, and that the new policy was only a study, according to several people familiar with Johnson’s version of what happened. Johnson was dismayed that Biden appeared to have forgotten details of his own policies, they said.?
Bates, the White House spokesman, said that those who have heard Johnson’s version are repeating “a false account.” He said the study is part of the new policy, and that the pause doesn’t affect current exports. Administration officials said Biden was attempting to signal to Johnson that the policy wouldn’t have the detrimental effects he worried about.
No new Energy Department permits for exporting LNG have been issued since the pause was announced.
Johnson declined to be interviewed for this article. Taylor Haulsee, a spokesman for Johnson, said the speaker stands by the account that Biden appeared to misunderstand the policy.?
Senior White House officials disputed assertions that Biden doesn’t understand his policies or appears disengaged, saying he has been sharp when dealing with crises and pushing through his legislative priorities.?
In mid-April, during the pressure-packed hours when Iran was attacking Israel, Biden stayed in the Situation Room tracking Iran’s missiles and drones as they were shot down while strategizing with senior aides about what to say to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the attack ended, according to an administration official.?
Biden sought de-escalation, telling Netanyahu on that call that he didn’t need a major military response to the unprecedented attack. Using military shorthand that refers to tit-for-tat responses as “turns,” the official said, Biden told the Israeli leader: “Don’t do a turn three.”?
When the call ended, Biden told his national security team that he suspected Israel would still respond in some way, but that his argument was likely to minimize the response. He was right: Israel hit a military target in central Iran, a limited strike.?
May 2023: Debt Ceiling
In 2011, when Biden was vice president, he played a central role in negotiations with Republicans over increasing the debt ceiling, striking a deal when the country was on the precipice of a default. According to some Republicans involved in similar negotiations with him in May 2023, his level of engagement was uneven.
“He would ramble,” said McCarthy, who led the Republican side of the talks. “He always had cards. He couldn’t negotiate another way.”?
When the deal was coming together, though, McCarthy wasn’t as openly critical of the president. He said he enjoyed meeting with him, and he praised Biden’s staff. “I thought his team was very professional, very smart, very tough at the same time,” he told reporters in May 2023.
For the final phase of the talks, McCarthy assigned fellow Republican House members Garret Graves of Louisiana and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina to work with White House aides on nitty-gritty issues.
At times, the White House team would defer items, saying Biden needed to make the final call. But Biden wouldn’t discuss those points in detail when he had check-in talks with McCarthy, according to people familiar with the conversations. He kept the calls general, expressing optimism about working things out, according to one of those people.?
Administration officials said Biden was employing an oft-used negotiating tactic of staying above the fray. McCarthy, one of the officials said, was doing the same thing.
On May 21 of last year, 11 days away from a possible default, Biden called McCarthy from Air Force One on his way back from a summit meeting in Japan to discuss the negotiations. “On that phone call, he was more with it than any other time,” McCarthy said. Biden told stories about the other foreign leaders at the conference and referenced how the debt-ceiling talks could impact various members of Congress politically, according to people familiar with it.?
When McCarthy and other lawmakers met with the president the next day, McCarthy said, Biden lacked the spontaneity he had projected on the plane. “He was going back to all the old stuff that had been done for a long time,” McCarthy said. “And he was shocked when I’d say: ‘No, Mr. President. We talked about that meetings ago. We are done with that.’”?
Administration officials said that during a negotiation it is not unusual for the White House to reassert its original position at various points, sometimes to show Democrats that the president is still pushing for their priorities.?
The president spoke so softly and with such little enunciation that attendees said they struggled to hear what he was saying, people familiar with the meeting said. He told the same story more than once about his experiences with the DuPont company during his time as a Delaware senator, one of the people said.?
Administration officials who were at the meeting said they saw nothing unusual about Biden’s demeanor and that they didn’t struggle to hear what he said or recall him repeating a story. Bates, the White House spokesman, said Biden didn’t rely overly on notes, and that through his long career he has frequently repeated anecdotes in meetings.
When the Republican negotiators came out of the meeting, McCarthy was upbeat, telling reporters that the “tone” of the White House meeting was “better than any other time we’ve had discussions.”
As Republican negotiators drove away from the White House, they called a colleague to update him on the talks, according to someone familiar with the call. One topic of discussion: the president and his acuity.?
Jim Oberman contributed to this article.
Last night I sent out the WSJ summation of the Biden interview with Time magazine. Earlier I sent out the Time interview.
Over at Washington Free Beacon, senior writer Andrew Stiles read the interview transcript.? This is what he found.
President Joe Biden sat down with journalists from Time magazine last week for an extensive interview about foreign policy and other issues heading into the 2024 election. We read the official transcript so you don't have to. Here are some of our favorite moments:
Jared Silverman, E-mail:?? [email protected]
Biden Threatens To Beat Up Journalist and Other Highlights From Time Magazine Interview
Andrew Stiles, June 4, 2024
President Joe Biden sat down with journalists from Time magazine last week for an extensive interview about foreign policy and other issues heading into the 2024 election. We read the official transcript so you don't have to. Here are some of our favorite moments:
1) Biden threatens to beat up a journalist who questions his age
The notoriously temperamental president got a little agitated when asked about the vast majority of Americans who express concern that Biden, 81, is too old and lacks the "mental sharpness" to serve as president.
"I can do it better than anybody you know," Biden told the much younger journalist. "You're looking at me, I can take you too."
Biden has a long history of threatening behavior toward members of the press.
2) Biden accuses Russia of invading Russia (twice)?
While attempting to discuss the war in Ukraine, Biden referred to Russian president Vladimir Putin's decision to send military forces "into Russia" and "into Moscow."
3) Biden gets his dictators mixed up
The president said he "made it clear to Putin from the very beginning" that the United States would reciprocate against the protectionist economic policies of the Chinese government, led by Xi Jinping. "And I said, so you're gonna do that to us? (unintelligible) We're going to do the same thing if you want to invest here," Biden told Time, according to the transcript.
4) Biden smears an ally?
Asked if Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was deliberately prolonging the war in Gaza to advance his own political career, Biden said he had no comment before proceeding to comment at length and validating the accusations against Netanyahu. "I'm not going to comment on that," he said. "There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion."
5) Biden explains what Hamas could do to end the war
"Hamas could end this tomorrow. Hamas could say (unintelligible) and done, period."
6) Biden forgets what year it is?
The president boasted about his "very candid relationship" with Xi. In this case he was actually referring to the Chinese dictator and not some other authoritarian, but Biden appeared confused about his job title. "I've spent more time with Xi Jinping than any leader in the world, over 90 hours alone with him since I've been vice president," he said.
7) ???????
During a rambling response to a question about his second-term foreign policy goals, Biden outlined his plans to help Africa and other countries in "what they are calling the south now." He also recalled working with Dick Lugar, the deceased former U.S. senator, to stop deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in the late 1980s.
"We, on the climate side, have come along and we've done everything that is reasonably—and three other countries are the reason we're in the problem we're in," Biden said. "But what happens if all of a sudden, on the Amazon, they're starting to clear, vast swaths of land, cut down forests, etc. Back when Dick Lugar was alive, he and I started something back in the '90s, where we said—late '80s, excuse me—where we said to, in the Amazon, they said, look, if you, we'll make a deal with you Brazil. You don't cut your forest, we'll pay you not to do it. We'll pay you not to do it, we have to prevent— And that's why we're working so hard to make sure Angola can be in a position that they have more solar capacity than almost any place in the world, to help that whole continent."
Got that?
8) Biden embarrasses?Obama bro
The interview took place a month after former president Donald Trump sat down with Time, a decision widely mocked by savvy Democrats such as Dan Pfeiffer.?"You really have to wonder how the supposedly smart and strategic Trump campaign let Trump sit down for an 83-minute interview with Time Magazine, a publication that has little reach and influence in the post-print era," the Obama bro snarked.
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7 个月Not a whole bunch of likes. Could our President be correct about your behavior towards Palestinians?
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9 个月VIVA ISRAEL ?? LOUVADO SEJA SEMPRE O TEU SANTO NOME AMADO SENHOR JESUS CRISTO, AMéM ???? Márcio - S?o José dos Campos - S?o Paulo - Brasil ???? Igreja Adventista do Sétimo Dia ?? Inscreva-se no canal do YouTube IASDBOSQUE ?????????