WRONG TIME, WRONG PLACE
Prez picked an awkward moment for a time check
Joe Biden’s presidency is reeling no matter how much he declares mission accomplished in Afghanistan.
Americans know better. The chaotic images from Afghanistan, the fact that hundreds of U.S. citizens were left behind, and Biden’s MIchael Dukakis in a tank moment — the glance he gives at his watch during a somber ceremony for 13 killed U.S. soldiers — paint a much different picture.
Biden’s poll numbers are collapsing and now endangering other Democrats.
Checking the time at any event is a long held no-no for a politician, as thenPresident George H.W. Bush learned at a debate against Bill Clinton in 1992.
But when Biden appeared to do it at Dover Air Force Base it felt especially disrespectful to the families of the dead soldiers who were gathered there — and to the country.
Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor, famously sat in a tank for a photo-op in Michigan during the 1988 presidential campaign, looking ridiculous in a helmet as the tank circled around a field.
Reporters and others openly laughed, prompting Republicans to run a TV ad of the event mocking the governor.
Dukakis never lived down the event, and was crushed in the November election. Bush’s look at his watch during the debate helped him lose not just the debate but the election.
Even before the watch-checking incident, Biden’s polling numbers were tanking because of his handling of the chaotic and deadly troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But now Biden is slipping and may never recover. A new poll by Saint Anselm College finds his support collapsing in the swing state of New Hampshire. Fiftyfive percent of all voters disapprove of his job performance, numbers that are the same as former President Donald Trump’s. And 62% of New Hampshire voters now say the country is on the wrong track.
Even worse news, Biden’s high unfavorable numbers are hurting other Democrats down the ticket.
White House officials have made no attempt to even spin Biden’s watch-checking, and instead are hoping it just goes away.
“Well, I would say his message to all of the family members who were there, those who were not even in attendance, is that he is grateful to their sons and daughters, the sacrifice they made to the country,” Psaki said when asked directly if Biden looked at his watch. “That he knows firsthand what it’s like to lose a child and the fact no one can tell you anything, that there’s no words that are going to fill that hole that is left by that.”
Psaki’s awkward explanation didn’t satisfy critics, especially Republicans who have blasted Biden’s actions in front of the families of the dead soldiers and the flagdraped caskets.
And by the way, it’s insulting for Biden to keep claiming he knows what it’s like to lose a child. His son, Beau, died of brain cancer, not in the battlefield, and there’s no way for Biden to know what it feels like to have your son or daughter cut down in war. So just stop it.