OPINION:
We have shocking circumstances, ranging from the Afghanistan fiasco to the wide-open southern border to the botched COVID-19 response to an inflation-rattled economy. One could go on and on with examples of how every day our lives are filled with reminders that we are being led by a group of people who seem to have more respect for and faith in the Taliban than they do us.
Every now and then, you get a glimpse of who these people really are. With decent people, you don’t need to wait for a glimpse. Who they are is apparent in everything they do. With the malevolent, one usually needs to look more closely. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.
Throughout this unfathomable Afghanistan crisis, President Joe Biden and his team of fools have been forced out of their various basements and caves, making them vulnerable to exposure. The usual argument is that “good people” make mistakes, and bad things can happen to anyone. That’s true. And then you have people who are revealed, in moments, as being malignantly narcissistic, decidedly morally corrupt, and starkly malevolent.
Despite the media narrative during the campaign, Mr. Biden was never thought of as “empathetic.” That was a marketing campaign, more easily carried out by keeping the man in his basement. During this time, and even after the election, I surmised his handlers kept him in hiding because his cognitive function was too precarious. His behavior during the incomprehensible Afghanistan debacle has disabused me of that notion.
No doubt he has some serious cognitive deficits. Still, after his ABC interview and every other appearance he’s made, it’s clear Mr. Biden is simply the rude, unsympathetic, and narcissist he’s always been. That is what the White House has been hiding.
Most recently reminding us of this fact was his unconscionable behavior at the Dover Air Force Base during the repatriation of the bodies of our 13 murdered service members. Mr. Biden managed to make what was supposed to be a dignified occasion distinctly undignified and insulting to the now Gold Star families in attendance. In the case of Mr. Biden that somber day, the devil in the detail was revealed by him looking at his watch as the caskets of America’s loved ones came out of the back of the transport plane.
What exactly was more important to Mr. Biden when the one job he had in those moments was to show his respect to those who were murdered and their families because of his dereliction of duty? Was he bored? When one looks at one’s watch, the action implies something more important, more interesting, to do. You’d rather be elsewhere.
At one point, the president appeared as though he was going to make a gesture with his right arm to directly pull back the jacket sleeve so he could view his watch more easily. But he stopped himself mid-gesture, managing to simply pull his arm out enough to view at the timepiece.
This realization alone tells us that he knew exactly how awful it was and how he shouldn’t be seen doing it, but he did it anyway. He still didn’t care.
At one point, I wondered if he was looking at his hands to see if there was still any blood left on them.
Mr. Biden looking at his watch once during this hallowed ceremony was shocking to the conscience. But in an interview, Darin Hoover, one of the Gold Star fathers who were present at the ceremony to receive his son’s body, U.S. Marines Sgt. Taylor Hoover, told Sean Hannity that Mr. Biden looked at his watch every day single time a casket went by him.
“In reference to the checking of his watch, that didn’t happen just once. That happened on every single one that came out of that airplane… It happened on every single one of them. They would release the salute, and he looked down at his watch on every last one. All thirteen, he looked down at his watch,” noted the Daily Caller of the exchange.
The web news magazine also reported that “Gold Star Father Mark Schmitz, whose son Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz was killed in Kabul: ‘I actually leaned into my son’s mother’s ear and said ’I swear to God if he checks his watch one more time…’ I found it to be the most disrespectful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said something as revealing to the American people when asked by a reporter about what would happen to the Americans abandoned behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. “We have Americans who get stranded in countries all the time….” A chilling response to at least hundreds of Americans at mortal risk.
These brief, detailed moments reveal a disgusting, cavalier, smug, dismissive, and patronizing attitude explaining why everything is the disaster that it is: It is the reflection of politicians now running this country who actually don’t like us or the country itself.
• Tammy Bruce, the author, host at Fox Nation, and contributor at Fox News is a radio talk-show host.
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