Dear Friends + Interlocutors,

Aimed at a domestic audience for political purposes, it reminded me of what Nixon and Kissinger wanted the North Vietnamese to conclude as a result of Nixon's carpet bombing of Cambodia. Their goal was to convince the leadership in Hanoi that Nixon was a madman, capable of anything. 

If I were Xi or Vlad, I would take notice. Biden looked unhinged, capable of anything. True, Papa Joe may have been putting on an act. If so, it was a damn good one. Vindictive, menacing, hectoring, self-righteous, arrogant, and yet effective and even impressive. 

It struck me as a calculated effort to distract the country from his own dreadful track record and plunging poll numbers. 

Clearly, Biden and the Democrat Establishment cannot break off their love/hate relationship with Donald Trump, the ultimate piñata. And so they are determined to make the most of it. Who can blame them? 

This wild-and-crazy, womanizing New York real estate developer came from right field to beat their anointed, sainted Hillary. It was an insult, a slap in the face to the “progressive” world.

An unacceptable one. Do you think Director Jim Comey and his executive team at the FBI accepted it? No way. Do you think CIA honcho, John Brennan, accepted it? Do you think the Democrat National Committee accepted it? They went to work to stop it.

Coordinating with the bureaucrats of the so-called “deep state” they grabbed their broomsticks and launched them into the spokes of the incoming Trump Administration, starting the morning after the election upset. 

The first item to hit the national radar screen was the allegation that Trump colluded with the Kremlin to win the election. It was propagandized as a fact. This hoax is now known as RussiaGate by those in the know. 

Have any of the mendacious participants in that fraud apologized for it? Not on your life. Not now, not ever. They were lying in service to a good cause, don’t you know. Ergo, no problemo.

So Trump had to contend with a poisoned smoke screen, leading up to his inauguration, from the Deep State and the allied mainstream news media. The newly-elected POTUS had to swim against a strong current from day one and was rope-a-doped by the Democrats during his entire time in the White House. 

Fill in your own metaphor. Trump dealt with it as best he could on Twitter. In the end, performance-wise, he turned out to be something of a mixed bag as Prez. 

Trump attempted to deal with the illegal immigration disaster on the southern border, but with only limited success. He talked a good talk, but Mexico did not build a wall as he promised. Of course, Trump did far better than what Biden and his “progressive” wrecking crew are doing in follow-up. 

In effect, Biden his team have been enticing illegals and a Niagara of undocumented unknowns to crash the border, and keep going, with a wink and a nod. It is an unprecedented outrage.

Trump could do nothing constructive with respect to Russia because any move in that direction was instantly branded by the Democrats and Neocons as “collusion”. They liked to think that Putin put Trump in the White House.

Relations with Russia were therefore put in cold storage, where they remain. The downside potential for Europe is explosive.  

Trump wined and dined Xi at Mar-a-Lago, but slapped tariffs on China. Papa Joe has dutifully continued and expanded them. It is causing inflation for America. 

China remains a problem. Washington under Trump and Biden has throttled China in various ways, and Xi is naturally reacting. The downside is explosive.

Trump paid a visit to Kim Jong-un in Korea, another charm offensive, like with Xi. Mr. “Art of the Deal” came up empty. No results. Just photo opportunities.

The defusing of the Korean peninsula seemed a possibility, but Trump blew it, probably derailed by the Pentagon, by the Blob and by his own third-rate hawkish advisors, such as Neocon lunatic John Bolton, whom Trump appointed.

As for Papa Joe, I give him high marks for gall and shamelessness. If you take the southern border issue alone, the man should find the nearest big hole, and hide.

He and his team are deliberately flaunting the law and making matters worse. The hands-off policy is enabling human trafficking and drug smuggling. They frame it as “democracy” or “equity” and some sort of humanitarian enterprise. 

Biden does not address the issue at all. He seems paralyzed. He has never visited the border. He nominally put his hapless VP in charge. She is a clown. 

Picking Cackling Kamala as VP may indeed have been the most irresponsible and cynical decision Biden has made to date. 

He has no business lecturing anybody. He has zero credibility and an overplus of hypocrisy. Once he loses the Congress to the Republicans, Biden will be utterly irrelevant. It will not be pretty...

Here’s a sample of what I wrote on January 7th, 2021, the day after the Capitol Hill riot:

Trump played his hand, and it was overplayed. After his speech [on the National Mall], he should have told the crowd to camp out, stay calm, refrain from violence and not be provoked. Naturally, that’s easy for me to say in retrospect, sitting on the sidelines. But it would have been the logical and responsible thing to do.

No excuses, but there does remain the unanswered question of agents provocateurs and the part they may have played in spearheading the riot. That will eventually come out in the wash.

Patrick