AMAC Exclusive – By Seamus Brennan
Facing record-low poll numbers, skyrocketing inflation and gas prices, and an escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Joe Biden traveled to the United States Capitol Tuesday evening to deliver his first State of the Union Address. Although many Americans expected Biden to use the occasion to try to turn the page on the first 13 months of his troubled presidency, Biden instead used the opportunity to double down on his far-left policy platform without accepting any responsibility for the historic failures that have unfolded during his administration.
Here are five of the biggest takeaways from Biden’s State of the Union Address:
- Biden Has Proven He Is Completely Disconnected from Reality on a Wide Slate of Issues
Remarkably, Biden found a way to make it through his entire hour-long speech without even mentioning some of the major crises that have dominated the headlines throughout the first year of his presidency.
For instance, despite misleadingly calling his administration’s botched withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success” last summer, he failed to even mention the event or honor the 13 American servicemembers who tragically lost their lives as a result of the withdrawal. Given that many Americans perceive the Afghanistan disaster to have been the moment the Biden presidency collapsed (his poll numbers have failed to recover since last August), the President’s failure to acknowledge the crisis was jarring.
Perhaps even more shocking was Biden’s blatant dishonesty about his handling of the border crisis, soaring crime rates, and state-level attempts to pass election integrity measures. Despite refusing to do so much as visit the southern border during the worst year for illegal immigration on record (during which millions of illegal aliens crossed the southern border), Biden amazingly insisted the U.S. needed to “secure the border and fix the immigration system”—as if his administration had not directly caused the crisis in the first place.
Moreover, even though Biden has presided over substantial increases in violent crime in Democrat-run cities—including a 24 percent increase in murders and all-time homicide records in several cities—he called for “investing in crime prevention” and contended that “the answer is not to defund the police.” There has perhaps never been a greater public reversal by a president speaking in that chamber: Biden has spent years allied with the radical “Defund the Police” movement while his Justice Department pushes weak-on-crime policies like abolishing cash bail and ending qualified immunity. Just as concerningly, moments after advocating for “crime prevention,” and “keeping Americans safe,” Biden called for major Second Amendment restrictions, which would directly impede on Americans’ ability to protect themselves.
Biden also amplified his dishonesty campaign against state-level election integrity measures by claiming such laws are enacted to “suppress the vote” and “subvert entire elections”—even though such laws do nothing beyond requiring valid photo identification and other commonsense measures to keep elections fair and free.
As Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, correctly observed following Biden’s remarks, “On the critical issues facing our country, Biden was either unsurprisingly silent or knowingly dishonest.”
2. Biden Thinks Even More Massive Spending Is a Solution to Soaring Inflation
Almost immediately after vowing to find ways to lower the nation’s 40-year-high rates of inflation, Biden proceeded to aggressively push for high-cost components of his domestic spending agenda, which, if passed, would succeed in only worsening the already dire inflation crisis. As Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) noted, “Biden’s plan to reduce inflation and the national debt is for government to borrow and spend $2 trillion.” If Joe Biden is serious about cutting costs and easing inflation, the obvious first step is to stop advocating for spending bills that would put the American economy into a tailspin.
3. Democrats Are Cynically Playing Politics With COVID
For a full two years, Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats did everything in their power to keep businesses closed, schools shut down, and schoolchildren in masks without any regard for science or medical data. Now that their poll numbers have tanked, Democrats suddenly shifted their COVID messaging on the eve of the State of the Union. “We are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines,” Biden said. “We’ve reached a new moment in the fight against COVID-19, with severe cases down to a level not seen since last July.” Biden’s address was also delivered on the same day that Washington, D.C., and other major cities ended their mask mandates. Many pundits pointed out that such decisions appeared to be made not according to “the science,” but as a political effort to salvage Biden’s image as he faces growing political vulnerabilities.
Despite Joe Biden’s wishes, he can be assured that the American people will not soon forget the past two years of politically motivated mandates and lockdowns.
4. Without Accomplishments to Stand on, Biden Resorted to Plagiarizing Notable Lines from Trump’s State of the Union Addresses
In another desperate attempt to improve his administration’s faltering image, Biden cynically appealed to the American manufacturing industry in a way that closely echoes lines from former President Donald Trump’s speeches.
As Trump said during his 2019 State of the Union, “I hope you can pass the USMCA into law so that we can bring back our manufacturing jobs in even greater numbers, expand American agriculture, protect intellectual property, and ensure that more cars are proudly stamped with our four beautiful words, made in the U.S.A”—a signature Trump line.
Even though Biden did not campaign on “Made in America” and has done little to bring jobs and factories back to American shores, he oddly resorted to taking a page out of Trump’s songsheet. “The rebirth of the pride that comes from stamping products ‘Made in America.’ The revitalization of American manufacturing,” Biden said.
Biden’s claim that “the State of the Union is strong because you, the American people, are strong” also echoes Trump’s 2018 line that “the State of our Union is strong because our people are strong.” Clearly, the Biden team has run short on ideas.
5. Verbal Miscues and Forced Applauses Made for Several Awkward Moments
On several occasions throughout his remarks, Biden made embarrassing verbal miscues. Most notably, Biden mistakenly referred to the “Iranian people” instead of the Ukrainian people—a significant word fumble that elicited little notice from the mainstream media.
Further, applause from Congressional Democrats in the audience often seemed unnatural and over-the-top—as though to give the impression that support for Biden’s policies—as well as his support among the Democrat Party—is more fervent than it actually is. Though consistent applause from members of the president’s party at the State of the Union is far from unusual, as conservative commentator Mollie Hemmingway noted, “Even by the standard of an audience full of politicians, something feels so fake and forced in their ‘enthusiastic’ response.”
If Biden truly sought to change the narratives of crisis and incompetence surrounding his presidency at last night’s State of the Union, by all indications, he came up short. The speech was not one of confidence, of accountability, or of strength; rather, it was a speech full of excuses, lies, and finger-pointing.
Should Joe Biden’s poll numbers and support from the American people manage to fall even lower than they already are—a possibility that does not seem unlikely— the President will have no one to blame but himself.