Does anybody remember how the Clinton Administration prepared to leave the White House in 2001 by taking the “W” keys off keyboards, gluing desk drawers shut, vandalizing equipment, and stealing office supplies? The General Accounting Office found that at least $15,000 worth of damage was done. Bill and Hillary themselves took “$190,000 worth of china, flatware, rugs, televisions, sofas, and other gifts” before being forced to pay for $114,000 worth and return the rest. It was a minor scandal at the time, but it’s nothing compared to the mess that awaits the Trump Administration after this week. And unlike those impish Clintonistas, the Biden Administration’s policy vandalism has both national and international implications.
On the national front, despite their intentional refusal to guard the border or even vet illegal immigrants, having played a part in their electoral defeat earlier this month, Democrats have decided to make enforcement of our laws harder for their successors. “The outgoing administration,” the New York Post reported earlier this week, “intends to launch an ICE Portal app starting in early December in New York City that will allow migrants to bypass in-person check-ins to their local ICE office.” Department of Homeland Security figures told the Post that a “glitchy and unreliable” app will make it much easier for illegal immigrants to evade authorities. That’s a big problem, but what’s worse is that “Even when it’s working correctly, the new app doesn’t check for past arrests or outstanding warrants — something the current system tied to in-person appointments does, sources said.” Additionally, the Biden Administration is attempting to make it possible for those waiting for hearings to get rid of electronic monitoring.
The whole thing stinks. It is especially bad that this system doesn’t check for criminal records even as more and more stories come out of truly vile criminal acts committed by unvetted immigrants. An illegal immigrant in Brooklyn was arrested—and then released!—this week for throwing his neighbor’s dog off of a fourteen-story building. On Friday, the story came out that an illegal Venezuelan immigrant was arrested in Denver for sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old girl. Another illegal immigrant in Texas was arrested for sexually abusing multiple children under thirteen. Other illegal immigrants were arrested this week for sexual crimes, some involving child rape, in Virginia and Massachusetts. Perhaps the most ironic story, however, was of the arrest of another Venezuelan who robbed and attacked one of New York City DA Alvin Bragg’s Assistant DAs. This particular criminal had already been arrested five times and is a member of the Tren De Agua gang.
This list isn’t exhaustive. It’s just what this particular writer happened to notice this week, scrolling the news. Imagine how many more such stories there are out there, given Homeland Security’s revelation earlier this year of the hundreds of thousands of cases of known violent criminals in the U.S.
Our current government is making it harder for our country to protect itself from these criminals.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the news on the international front this week was that apparently angered by Russia’s welcoming of North Korean troops to help them in Ukraine, the Biden Administration not only allowed our military to send Ukraine anti-personnel mines but also approved the use of long-range American missiles (ATACMs) against targets inside Russia, despite Vladimir Putin’s warnings that such an attack would constitute an act of war on the U.S.’s part. As explained before, in this space, the use of such precision missiles necessitates technological involvement by the U. S. Putin’s threats have included a nuclear response.
It was an exceptionally foolish decision on Biden’s part, especially since we know that Ukraine received only fifty American ATACMs, not enough to actually turn any tides in the now-two-year-old conflict but enough to possibly trigger a response from Putin. Journalist Paul Sperry reported that Colonel Larry Mrozinski, a former senior State Department military adviser, texted him with this message: ‘Never in my life has an outgoing president made it abundantly clear that he is pushing the United States into WWIII.’”
Are we at World War III yet? Hawks in this conflict argue that Putin has threatened consequences for various red lines before and has not followed through on them. Ukraine did fire a half-dozen of the missiles deep into Russian territory on Tuesday. Additionally, Britain has now changed their policy and allowed Ukrainian use of their intermediate-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia’s borders. And France has approved firing their own missiles into Russia as well, though it is not known if this has happened yet. While Putin has not responded thus far with a nuclear attack, he did strike the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro with an intermediate-range Oreshnik missile on Friday. He is not backing down.
Could things get worse? Speaking with Laura Ingraham, former Trump Administration Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby said that the threat of nuclear weapons is “very serious,” but so too is “horizontal escalation with the Houthis, Iran, North Korea, and China.” Colby observed that this saber-rattling comes as Admiral Samuel Paparo of the United States Pacific Command indicates that our own stockpiles of missiles and other weapons are very low. In fact, as Anton LaGuardia of the Economist reported, Paparo: “expects Russia will provide submarine technology to China that will help it to close the gap with the US. Also, RU expects to provide missile and sub-technology to North Korea.”
In other words, we will indeed see that horizontal escalation in all sorts of ways. And though it could cause aggravated conflicts in several areas of the world, it will be geared toward helping China compete with us militarily. As many sober-minded analysts such as Colby believe, our strategic lens needs to be on the Pacific. Yet the Biden Administration (whoever actually runs it) has been intent on keeping the Ukraine-Russia conflict alive, much to our detriment. As Colby told Ingraham, it looks as though they are trying to “tie Trump’s hands” in this matter. While it will not work, the amount of damage it will cause could range from a mess to World War III, which Colonel Mrozinski worries about.
The Bidenistas will not likely take the “W” keys off the keyboards this time. Maybe they will take off the “T” keys. We hope they won’t steal or vandalize any equipment in the White House, either. But this failed Administration has already acted rashly in ways aimed at taking away the “W’s”—Wins—that Americans voted Trump in to achieve. We don’t think they will succeed ultimately. But it’s deeply shameful, stupid, and reckless of them to try.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.
