February 8, 2023 Updated: February 8, 2023
Commentary
I have to admit that I
almost always find the State of the Union address a snore—except for the
heckling that I enjoy, if only because it breaks up the recitation of nonstop
clichés that are normally accompanied by members of the party in power jumping
up to applaud like trained seals.
Basically, the speech is
a laundry list of targeted legislation that everyone knows is unlikely to pass
but is designed to appeal to identity groups whose own trained seals will then
jump to their feet and flap.
This is punctuated by the
president pointing out people in the gallery whose life stories are supposed to
move us, or, to put it more precisely, make the president seem like a man of
compassion.
It’s often the most
memorable part of the event; the speech not so much.
I can’t think of any
actual phrases worth quoting in any of the SOTUs since I have been alive—there
has been no “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall” or “You have nothing to fear
but fear itself.”
This year was no
exception. In fact, I thought it was a bit worse, rhetorically flat as the
proverbial pancake except when President Biden—for reasons that were
inscrutable—decided it was time to yell for emphasis.
The speech was evidently
written by Vinay Reddy, a man who previously worked as director of strategic
communications for the National Basketball Association, a seemingly irrelevant
fact that may have more import, as I will explain later.
We were told in advance
the speech would be a call to collegiality and bipartisanship, when it was
anything but.
Instead of offering any
of the promised compromises, Biden went in the opposite direction, going, as we
used to say in Hollywood, “off book” by suddenly accusing Republicans of
wanting to gut Social Security and Medicare, a flagrant lie he frequently
enjoys employing.
At the SOTU, this
political ploy got a round of boos, as it should have.
He also bragged how he
deserved credit for closing the southern border, interrupting the deadly
fentanyl epidemic, when he was, as everyone knows, the one who opened the
border in the first place and kept it that way despite immense criticism.
This one elicited laughs,
as it also should have.
But worst of all was the
great MIA—the elephant of elephants in the room—the Chinese Communist Party.
During his 80-minute
speech, Biden devoted barely a minute to our greatest adversary by far and
growing global threat to democracy.
The reasons for this
omission on Biden’s part are all too obvious.
First, was the great
unmentionable—the little matter of the giant Chinese balloon with a still
mysterious payload that just drifted across our country for nearly a week,
transfixing us all and engendering all kinds of spin and, more than likely,
lies from the administration and military officials and their media claque.
Why was that allowed to
happen?
And, more importantly,
there’s the open question of whether Biden himself has long been part of their
now well-known “elite capture”—he and his family having been the recipients of
untold amounts of Chinese millions. That isn’t helped by the endless
allegations surrounding his son Hunter’s laptop and the ensuing coverup by 51
(!) former intelligence officials who wrote a letter pretending the laptop was
Russian disinformation.
One of them, David
Wise,
has at least been honorable enough to admit that he knew he was lying at the
time. The others have yet to apologize—or be punished in any way, for that
matter.
(Incidentally, Russia
stood in for China during the speech, with Putin serving as the global
bogeyman. It almost seemed a deliberate distraction.)
But back to a third
reason why Biden’s SOTU may have hardly mentioned the most important foreign
policy issue facing humanity—the speech’s author, Mr. Reddy.
As noted, he worked in
communications for the NBA, an outfit known to have overlooked the CCP’s
genocidal treatment of Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and so many others for basketball
players’ financial gain.
What better experience
for writing for the president at this particular time? But it’s not just now.
He was also his chief speechwriter when Biden was vice president, the period
when he was going to China in the company of Hunter and about which there are
myriad questions.
He then went on to be a
senior adviser and speechwriter for the Biden 2020 presidential campaign.
Reddy must know a lot
that might be illuminating. My guess is that at some point, he will write a
book. But, as with other works of the “political tell-all” genre, my advice is
caveat emptor.
For the record, I thought
Gov. Sarah Sanders was fine in her Republican response, if a teeny bit long.
Her ending story of a secret trip she took with President Trump to visit the
troops in Iraq was especially effective.
She, of course, made
herself clear about the evils of the CCP. Unfortunately, she didn’t have an
audience of trained seals to applaud her. But then, maybe she didn’t need it.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and
do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/no-china-in-bidens-off-book-state-of-the-union_5043241.html
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