OPINION:
When I covered the White House for The Washington Times for a dozen years, I latched on to this spectacular perk called a “pre-advance.”
Before a presidential trip abroad, a huge contingent of White House aides and advisers — along with the Secret Service, the counterterrorism unit and even the White House chef — hit all the stops on the itinerary, planning every move along the way. That’s called an “advance” trip.
But even before that, there’s a “pre-advance.” The schedule isn’t definite at that point, so the contingent often makes several stops, some of which will get ditched when the trip is arranged. The group checks out venues, hotels and airports — and the chef explores where he’ll be getting food. (Interesting note: The White House cooks often find stores 50 miles or more away to make sure they don’t give nefarious forces a chance to poison the president.)
The White House is nice enough to invite the media along for the pre-advance trips, on which a handful of journalists weigh in on suitable filing centers and hotels, as well as available sites for TV stand-up hits.
I often made the trip for The Washington Times after doing the pre-advance. And I noticed one amazing thing on every trip: The host nation had cleaned up dramatically since we visited for the pre-advance a few months before.
On one pre-advance to Georgia, the trip from the airport to the hotel in the capital city of Tbilisi was dismal: dilapidated shacks, potholes, filth everywhere. On the trip itself, though, it was completely different: brightly painted homes, a repaved highway, everything spick and span.
The same goes for a trip to Abuja, Nigeria. When we flew into the capital city, built in the last few decades in the middle of nowhere, the shanties and tin shacks of the workers were everywhere. By the time we came back for the presidential trip, they were all gone.
That’s never happened in America, though, right? Wrong. Foreign leaders from around the world are coming this week to San Francisco for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Unless you’ve spent the last few years under a rock, you know that San Francisco has become a horrible, dangerous city filled with violent homeless people and drug addicts shooting up on the street.
The camps cropped up amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the progressives’ push to “defund the police.” Residents were livid that their once-nice neighborhoods were now homeless encampments and drug dens. But through all that, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, did nothing.
But all that has been cleaned up in advance of the summit, which Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend. Mr. Newsom this week said that breaking down a slew of homeless encampments was done only to provide a good impression for visiting leaders.
He made no pretense that he was helping Californians. “I know folks say, ’Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town.’ That’s true because it’s true,” Mr. Newsom said.
The whole debacle landed in the White House this week when an uppity reporter had the temerity to ask a Biden administration official why San Francisco was power-washed before the summit.
“San Francisco has cleaned up their streets ahead of President Biden and President Xi’s meeting. They’ve moved homeless to other parts of the city, cleared tent cities and trash off the street. Is the president embarrassed that an American city needs to go through a total makeover to be presentable for his out-of-town guests?” the reporter said.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan spouted some mumbo-jumbo about how “the president is incredibly proud of the record that the United States will bring as host to this summit” and is “able to showcase the United States as the premier destination for investment.”
The reporter didn’t take the nonanswer as a real answer and followed up: “Does President Biden agree it’s more important to impress the leader of China than the American people that live in San Francisco and pay taxes every day?”
Mr. Sullivan replied, “First, I’d completely reject the premise of your question.”
Well, of course you would.
Nobody cleaned up that God-forsaken city for years — a city that is the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who lives in a mansion behind a huge wall, yet her husband was still attacked there by a hammer-wielding maniac.
Then, suddenly, the City by the Bay is all cleaned up in a few weeks.
I’ve never thought of America as remotely Third World, but having traveled all over the globe and seen exactly this happen, it sure seems like a Third World country now.
And there’s just one reason: This is President Biden’s America.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X @josephcurl.
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