Daily Archives: May 22, 2021

President Joe Biden inherited a nation poised for a tremendous post-COVID resurgence, requiring only mid-level competence to keep things on track. Unfortunately for America, he hasnt been up to the task.

The biggest issue facing the nation for the past year obviously has been the coronavirus, which has killed more than 600,000 Americans, infected nearly 34 million, and forced the economy into a near standstill last year.

As he entered office, however, the good news for Biden was that multiple vaccines already had been developed and with doses ramping up, thanks to former President Trumps Operation Warp Speed. The economy was rebounding, and millions of jobs had returned. What was required of the new president was to not screw things up.

But at the four-month mark of his administration, Biden has badly mismanaged things, contributing to a cluster of problems that are increasingly spiraling out of control.Punchbowl News, an inside-the-Beltway email newsletter, downplayed Bidens predicaments as mere brushfires, as though they were minor headaches to be addressed without much concern. But the nation is facing serious problems either immediately or lurking around the corner.

Millions of Americans had to calculate whether they had enough gas in their cars to keep them mobile after acyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which carries 45 percent of the fuel used by the east coast of the United States. With almost immediate gasoline shortages, rising prices, and gas stations shutting down, the nation would rightly expect the president to snap to attention. Instead, administration officials seemed to shrug at the growing calamity and declined to even offer an opinion on whether the pipeline operator should pay a ransom to the hackers.

Its a private sector decision, and the administration has not offered further advice at this time,said Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies. This was three days after the attack had shut down the pipeline.

Despite the public nonchalance, the Biden White House was acutely sensitive to the images of lines outside gas stations before Memorial Day,reported Axios, which also noted Biden was being likened to former President Jimmy Carter, who oversaw dramatic fuel shortages in the 1970s and a national malaise. This comparison was made somewhat easier by the recent release of a bizarrely proportioned photoof the Bidens visiting the Carters at home just a few weeks earlier.

In the end, despite longstanding warnings against making payments to terrorists largely because it incentivizes future attacks the pipeline company paid a $5 million ransom.

While the gas shortages were occupying Americans daily lives, there was all-out war brewing in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas. Trump had shepherded historic diplomatic agreements between Israel and Arab nations through the Abraham Accords, but Biden seems determined to disrupt the delicate peace in the region.

Biden restored$235 million in aid to the Palestinians, clearly signaling to Hamas designated as aForeign Terrorist Organizationby the Clinton administration in 1997 that American support for Israel had weakened.Prominent criticssay such a shift invites precisely the kinds of violence we are seeing in the region today. As a result, the Palestinian militants areemboldened.

Not content with roiling conditions in other parts of the world, Biden has also caused a catastrophe on our southern border. He campaigned for president promising amnesty for illegal immigrants, taxpayer-provided health care, work permits, support for sanctuary cities, and ending deportations.

Upon assuming office, he began dismantling Trumps effective policies. This naturally created a border surge. Its little wonder that migrants quickly began arriving at our border wearing Biden-themed T-shirts.

Despite months of the White House refusing to call the situation a crisis, thats exactly what it is. In April alone, border apprehensions by federal officials jumped to178,622, an increase from 173,348 apprehensions the previous month. Even more shocking is the fact that Aprils number represents a more than tenfold increase compared to April 2020.

Many of those seeking to enter our country illegally are doing so to find work, something that millions of legal residents are declining to do. The April report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics was expected to show more than 1 million jobs added, but came in at only 266,000 new jobs, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 6.1 percent. For an economy that should be roaring through a strong recovery, these were dismal numbers, causing many to charge that federal unemployment benefits were too much competition for employers looking to hire.

Yet Biden rejected the notion that unemployment checks had anything to do with the weak jobs totals. No, nothing measurable, he said.

The data show, however, that 8.1 million jobs are currently available in America and small businesses across the country are complaining no one will accept their offersof employment. This is despite businesses offering higher wages, signing bonuses, cash just for showing up to an interview, and other enticements.

Now? There is credible fear ofinflation. So what is Bidens proposed solution to the problem? Why, more of what likely helped cause it, of course.

Coming into office, Biden was set up nicely for a smooth glide toward nearly effortless success. Like a golfer going into the final hole of a tournament with a three-shot lead, he needed only to keep the ball in the short grass to win. Instead, Biden has been in the woods, in the bunker, and in the water, seeing his chances for easy glory fading away.

Tim Murtaugh is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is the former communications director of President Donald J. Trumps 2020 reelection campaign.

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All Biden Needed To Not Screw Up Was Stay In His Basement. He Failed - The Federalist

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo participated in adviser meetings with his brother New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and some of the senior aides who helped cover up the states nursing home scandal to determine the administrations response to the sexual harassment allegations against him, the Washington Post reports.

Chris reportedly joined multiple conversations with his Democratic brothers team to discuss and review how the governor should respond to the accusations.

The cable news anchor encouraged his brother to take a defiant position and not to resign from the governors office, the people said. At one point, he used the phrase cancel culture as a reason to hold firm in the face of the allegations, two people present on one call said, WaPo stated.

CNN acknowledged Chriss wrongdoing in a statement to WaPo but said they would not discipline him for the conflict of interest.

Chris has not been involved in CNNs extensive coverage of the allegations against Governor Cuomo on-air or behind the scenes. In part because, as he has said on his show, he could never be objective. But also because he often serves as a sounding board for his brother, CNN said. However, it was inappropriate to engage in conversations that included members of the Governors staff, which Chris acknowledges. He will not participate in such conversations going forward.

Chris repeatedly ran interference for his brother in the early months of the pandemic by joking around on live television and refusing to ask him questions about the rising nursing home death toll that resulted from the governors deadly policy. The anchor repeatedly brought his brother on his show during the peak of the governors response to COVID-19 in 2020, but now claims any further coverage of the family member would be a conflict of interest.

[READ: Enough With The Cuomo Brothers Yucking It Up On CNN. We Want Answers]

Obviously I am aware of what is going on with my brother. And obviously, I cannot cover it because he is my brother, Cuomo told his audience just a few months ago. Now, of course, CNN has to cover it. They have covered it extensively and they will continue to do so.

In addition to offering his brother friendly airtime, Chris also benefitted from the special COVID-19 testing privileges the Democrat governor afforded to his family and other well-connected figures in the state.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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CNN's Chris Cuomo Faces No Consequences After Colluding To Cover Up Brother's Scandals - The Federalist

A popular Boston radio host who held the attention of listeners in New England for more than 40 years threatened to quit his job on-air on Wednesday after being told by his boss that he couldnt joke about Demi Lovatos sudden pronoun change.

I am the biggest of all time. And they said Shut up, Matt. Stop talking. Well, I hope youre happy because I just stopped talking. Matty out, Matty Siegel, co-host of the Matty in the Morning show on WXKS-FM radio, said live.

During his segment on Wednesday morning, Siegel explained that he was simply going against the woke thing but quickly felt punished for his views on Lovatos decision to become nonbinary and use the pronouns they/them.

Its a joke, the whole binary thing, he said. I dont care what Demi Lovato does. But now we have to worry about you might offend someone.

This isnt the first time Siegel said he was chastised for offending people on air. Just last year, Siegel said his boss warned him against making nasty comments about Donald Trump on-air. These restrictions on his speech and content, Siegel said, take away from the point of his job.

We were having fun with it, and my boss called up and said that Id crossed the line and they didnt want me talking about it anymore, Siegel told Boston.com. I responded by saying, If I cant talk about what Im thinking at this point in my career, I dont want to be on the radio anymore.

While Siegel said he likes his boss personally and is very fond of him, he clearly disagreed with his superiors position on the issue and questioned numerous times on the air why someone would limit the abilities of a host with decades of experience and a top-rated show.

This is why I got rich. OK. Because I told it like it is to my listeners for 40 bleeping years, Siegel explained. They pulled the plug on me and said you cant talk about what youre talking about.

Despite his threat of quitting on Wednesday, Siegel hosted a broadcast on Thursday morning explaining that he had reached an agreement with the station that gave him the freedom to say what he wants and that his wife refused to let his career end over Demi Lovato.

Somebody had to say this is ridiculous, ya know. And the company was like, What, you cant talk about that. Its like somebody had to say, Are you kidding? Like lifes not complicated enough, now youre telling young people they dont know what they are, the host said on-air on Thursday morning.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Popular Boston Radio Host Threatened To Quit Over Demi Lovato's Pronouns - The Federalist

The Atlantics David Frum appears to be first out of the gate in what will likely become a coordinated, aggressive media campaign to defend the people and institutions that got the COVID-19 origin story wrong and absolve them of all responsibility, however complicit they might be and instead blame it all on Trump and his supporters.

It sounds stupid, I know, but its true. Frum thinks Trump and his tens of millions of supporters are not interested in weighing the evidence of the viruss origins, and only want payback for the political and cultural injuries inflicted on them by the scientists. The whole thing, for them, is just a weapon in a culture war here at home.

Leaving aside the deep irony that Frum, of all people, is accusing anyone of not being interested in weighing the evidence, we need to understand this opening salvo for the retcon job it is. Frum is preemptively exonerating the gatekeepers and experts who resisted, and in some cases actively opposed, any discussion or serious inquiry into the possibility that COVID -19 didnt emerge naturally but escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

If Trump and his supporters turn out to be right, then theyre right for the wrong reasons, says Frum.As Bret Weinstein noted, this is an attempt to fictionalize the history of the debate about COVIDs origins and immunize the corrupt people and institutions that were on the wrong side of that debate. (Frum, you have to admit, is the perfect person to lead the charge on this.)

The need for such a campaign has become apparent in recent days because the question of COVIDs origins isnt going away. There are two main theories: either the virus naturally jumped from animal to humans, or it was being studied and perhaps manipulated or enhanced in a lab and accidentally escaped.

A much-criticized report issued in March by a World Health Organization-led team dismissed the idea that the virus could have escaped from a lab, calling it extremely unlikely despite the team having no access to relevant records or data in China. It concluded animal origin was the more likely of the two possibilities. The WHO-led team, which included scientists from China, devoted just four of 313 pages in its report to the possibility that the virus came from a lab.

Then last week, a group of prominent scientists published a letter in the journal Science calling for a deeper investigation, including the possibility that the virus escaped from a lab by accident. The letters signatories include some of the worlds leading coronavirus researchers. One of them is Dr. Ralph Baric, who collaborated with Dr. Shi Zheng-li, Chinas foremost expert on bat viruses, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began. They were trying to enhance the ability of bat viruses to infect humans.

The letter came just days after Nicholas Wade, a veteran science reporter for Nature and The New York Times, published a long essay laying out in great detail the evidence behind both origin theories. The takeaway from Wades piece is that the lab leak theory has a mountain of circumstantial evidence to support it, while the animal theory has absolutely nothing.

So why did the entire corporate media dismiss the lab leak theory as some crazy conspiracy theory last year? Well, because Trump and his supporters suggested it. When Sen. Tom Cotton last February had the temerity to note on Fox News that the virus emerged not far from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, The New York Times ran with the headline: Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins.

Never mind that what Cotton actually said was rather mild: We dont have evidence that this disease originated there. But because of Chinas duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.

The Times reaction to Cotton was emblematic of corporate media at large. From the outset, very few journalists wanted to talk about the lab leak theory for fear of being tarred as a fringe conspiracy theorist. No major media organizations devoted resources to investigating the diseases origin, and almost no prominent scientists came forward to ask the tough questions that some of them are asking now.

Last May, in an interview with National Geographic, Dr. Anthony Fauci dismissed the theory that COVID could have escaped from a lab. If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and whats out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated, Fauci said. Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.

When New York Magazine published a lengthy essay by Nicholson Baker in January, going over much of the same territory that Wade did last week, the silence from the rest of the corporate press was deafening. Baker cataloged in great detail the recent history of whats called gain-of-function research, which involves making naturally occurring viruses more potent, or transmissible, in an effort to predict what the next big pandemic-causing virus might be and prepare for it.

In recent decades, writes Baker, scientists have

made machines that mix and mingle the viral code for bat diseases with the code for human diseases diseases like SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, for example, which arose in China in 2003, and MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, which broke out a decade later and has to do with bats and camels. Some of the experiments gain of function experiments aimed to create new, more virulent, or more infectious strains of diseases in an effort to predict and therefore defend against threats that might conceivably arise in nature.

Very few people even knew about such research before the pandemic. But Fauci did. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he supported funding for gain-of-function experiments as part of a broader strategy of vaccine development. If anyone might have insight into how such experiments might result in a lab accident that could trigger a pandemic, its him.

Yet he refuses to discuss any of this, even with members of Congress who ask him about it directly. If you missed the recent exchange between Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul on this subject, its worth watching in full, partly to see Faucis breathtaking arrogance and condescension, but mostly to see how he refuses to answer or even engage a fairly straightforward question.

Notice Faucis response. He insists in legalistic, carefully circumscribed language that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He repeats this, mantra-like, throughout his exchange with Paul, circling back to it every time the senator presses him on why the U.S. government was funding Barics collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

But at one point Fauci pivots. Paul asks him if the National Institutes of Health has funded Barics gain-of-function research and Fauci says Baric doesnt do gain-of-function research, but then says, and if it is, its according to the guidelines and it is being done in North Carolina, not in China.

So, is Baric doing gain-of-function research, or not? Set aside whether its being done in China or North Carolina. Set aside whether the NIH was directly funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Does Fauci support such research? He wont say, and instead just keeps repeating his carefully parsed sentence that the NIH does not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Faucis evasion speaks volumes. If he were concerned, like the rest of us are, about the origins of COVID-19, if he really wanted to find out whether it might have been the result of gain-of-function research and somehow escaped from the lab in Wuhan, he wouldve gone to great lengths to answer Pauls questions and explain to the American people exactly what Baric was studying, and why, and how.

If Baric wasnt doing gain-of-function research, then what was he doing? Is it relevant to the pandemic? What was the extent of his collaboration with Shi and the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

At some point, hes going to have answer those questions, because the American people are going to demand concrete answers. Other prominent virologists are willing to talk about this, so why isnt Fauci?

The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert Redfield, said in a recent interview that, its important to just maintain scientific objectivity as we begin to look at the evidence for the ultimate origins of this particular virus, and that, Covid-19 is really distinctively different in that it entered into our awareness, and literally at the same time had very efficient human to human transmission. Thats not how zoonosis usually enter in the human species.

Now that prominent scientists like Redfield and others are saying such things, prominent journalists like Frum are scrambling to re-write the history of how their entire industry dismissed and demonized anyone who suggested COVID might have escaped from a lab.

Their hatred of Trump and his supporters made it impossible for them not to politicize the pandemic, to insist that COVID couldnt have escaped from a lab, because that would benefit Trump and validate his supporters. And now it will prevent them from telling the truth when the truth eventually comes out. Just watch.

Photo U.S. Navy / public domain

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The Media's COVID Origin Coverup Campaign Has Begun - The Federalist

Secretary of State Antony Blinken ignored the true reason to celebrate Cuban Independence Day, choosing to instead commemorate the day by celebrating the nations diversity instead.

Historically, Cubans celebrate May 20 for their independence from the U.S. in 1902 following the nations occupation after the Spanish-American war. The day observes the founding of the Republic of Cuba with the swearing-in of its first elected president Toms Estrada Palma. Blinkens tweet, however, appears to mischaracterize the holiday as one that celebrates the diversity of the Cuban people.

Today we recognize the strength and diversityof the Cuban people, Blinken wrote in a tweet on Thursday. The United States honors and stands with Cubans who pursue freedom and a more prosperous future, and we recommit to accompanying the Cuban people in their quest to determine their own future.

This view, as noted by Cuban media strategist Giancarlo Sopo, doesnt actually celebrate the formation of the Republic of Cuba. Instead, Blinkens message seems to be a bizarre way for Team Unity to reframe Cuban Independence Day as a woke holiday to appease domestic and Cuban leftists.

I dont know a Cubanhere or in the islandwho views 20 de mayo as a diversity holiday, Sopo explained.

The statement exemplifies the Democrats strange politics, Sopo continued. On one hand, they reframe Cuban Independence in woke terms to appease their US base. On the other, they avoid any mention of 20 de mayos actual purpose to avoid angering the Cuban regime, which doesnt recognize it.

This tiptoeing by the presidents principal adviser on U.S. foreign policy, Sopo concluded, is a failed attempt at Latino outreach.

This statement is the kind of culturally incompetent and ill-conceived Latino outreach effort that characterized Biden. Cuban Americans will think it is stupid and pointless. And the regime will be annoyed you released *anything* 20 de mayo related in the first place, he concluded.

This isnt Blinkens first diplomatic blunder since assuming his position representing. In February, Blinken posted a photo of himself posing in front of an upside-down Mexican flag paired with a message about his virtual meeting with Mexican leaders regarding regional migration, illegal border crossings, and trade.

He also rhetorically cowered in a meeting with Chinese diplomats in Anchorage, Alaska during discussions about the communist regimes attitudes towards Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Secretary Of State Hails Cuban Independence Day As A Celebration Of 'Diversity' - The Federalist