Biden acts much more like Putin’s puppet than Trump ever did.

Back in 2017, Walter Russell Mead wrote: If Donald Trump “were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

  • Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
  • Blocking oil and gas pipelines
  • Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
  • Cutting U.S. military spending
  • Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.”

Trump, of course, did none of those things, and indeed the entire “Russian collusion” narrative that the press pushed for his entire presidency has been thoroughly exploded.

But someone is doing these things, right now. I’m talking, of course, about Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., who at his shambolic Wednesday press conference gave Russia the go-ahead to invade Ukraine, though it was quickly walked back by backwalker-in-chief Jen Psaki, his press secretary.

The last time something like that happened was in 1950, when Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave North Korea what appeared to be a green light to invade South Korea. The result was the Korean War. One hopes Biden’s blunder will not bear similar consequences.

But that’s just the latest. Back to Mead’s checklist: Biden has in fact limited fracking as much as he possibly can.

Under Trump, the United States achieved energy independence, becoming a net exporter of oil and natural gas. Gas prices were low. The Keystone Pipeline, furthermore, promised to bring oil from Canada to the US heartland (“ethical oil” activists call it because it doesn’t come from a country dominated by dictators or Islamist enemies). Biden canceled that.

Gas prices have since skyrocketed, and people are unhappy, such that even NPR has noticed the Joe Biden “I did that!” stickers sprouting on gas pumps everywhere as ordinary Americans vent their frustrations. As for energy independence, Biden was reduced to begging OPEC to pump more oil to drive prices down. (OPEC, shockingly, declined.) High oil prices help Russia of course, since it’s a major oil producer.

And while Biden was blocking pipelines at home, he did manage to give US approval to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Russian gas fields to Europe, giving the Kremlin a huge cash infusion that will strengthen its position immeasurably while making Europe dependent on President Vladimir Putin, who could freeze them out by turning a few valves.

Basically, Biden’s energy policy involves weakening the United States and strengthening Russia.

As for nuclear arms, the Russians and the Chinese aren’t even interested in arms-control agreements. They’re rushing ahead with new and advanced nuclear-weapons programs while Biden looks at canceling similar US programs.

To be fair, Biden hasn’t cut US military spending. However, as August’s Afghanistan debacle illustrates, he has managed to make the US military ineffective. The Chinese and the Taliban mocked us on social media after that disastrous defeat. Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Mark Milley, meanwhile, seems more focused on racial education and pronouns. (And there’s a swell new video out of Army women dancing in barracks. Take that, Putin!)

And tamping down tensions with Iran is putting it mildly, as the Biden administration has been moving back to the failed John Kerry agreement, in which Iran agrees to pretend not to develop nuclear weapons and we agree to pretend to believe them.

So who’s the Putin puppet?

But I am saying that Biden is acting in destructive ways that are difficult to distinguish from what he would be doing had he in fact been put in office to weaken the United States and strengthen Russia, Iran and other American enemies.

To the checklist above you can add a deliberate strategy of sowing racial and class division, a spending plan that anyone with half a brain could see would lead to inflation and an exploding national debt, accompanied by a push for regulatory policies that would constrict supplies and drive prices up further.

The people who voted for Biden mostly thought they were voting for some sort of return to normalcy. We haven’t gotten that, unless you regard the Jimmy Carter years as normal. As a consequence, Biden’s plummeting in the polls. But we’re still stuck with him for at least three more years. It’s hard to see this ending well.