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Who\u2019s our real president? Joe Biden \u2014 or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?<\/a><\/p>\n Is Joe Biden President? That\u2019s the question to ask after staffers walked back Biden\u2019s latest remarks on Taiwan.<\/p>\n During his rather uneven \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Scott Pelley last weekend, Biden firmly and clearly announced that the\u00a0United States would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n This was a dramatic statement, and a substantial shift from\u00a0America\u2019s traditional policy of \u201cstrategic ambiguity\u201d on Taiwan<\/a>, in which our response to Chinese saber-rattling over the island nation was essentially \u201cfool around and find out.\u201d\u00a0Biden was not at all ambiguous:\u00a0If China went to war with Taiwan, it would be war with the United States and its allies.<\/p>\n That departure made some sense. Back in February, Biden seemed to grant Vladimir Putin a green light to invade Ukraine. White House spokesmen quickly walked that back, but the green light, coming directly from Biden\u2019s lips, apparently convinced Putin that he could launch an invasion without blowback.<\/p>\n That turned out to be wrong, of course, and now the United States is involved in a proxy war with Russia, while\u00a0sanctions and export disruptions cause the world\u2019s food and fuel markets<\/a>\u00a0to go crazy and have\u00a0Europe looking at a long, cold winter of gas shortages<\/a>\u00a0and electrical blackouts. So firmness, this time.<\/p>\n But Biden\u2019s firmness was short-lived. Within hours, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and other spokesmen were loudly proclaiming US policy had not, in fact, changed at all.<\/p>\n Gordon Chang\u00a0writes<\/a>: \u201cThis is the fourth time that Joe Biden as president, has publicly stated the U.S. will defend Taiwan. He made that pledge last August to ABC News\u2019s George Stephanopoulos. The President repeated his words to CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper last October.<\/p>\n \u201cBiden also said the same thing to a reporter in Tokyo in May. White House and administration officials, both anonymously and on the record, have contradicted the President all four times.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Curtiss-Wright Export case, the Supreme Court declared the president the \u201csole organ\u201d of the nation in foreign affairs, noting the importance of speaking with one voice when dealing with other nations. The formulation, and authoritative expression, of US foreign policy is supposed to come from the president.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yet over and over again, Biden has been undercut by subordinates who basically said, \u201cPay no attention to the old man in the Oval Office.\u201d<\/p>\n This won\u2019t do. Either Biden is president, or he is not. If he\u2019s president, then policy should come from him, and it\u2019s the job of subordinates to make that policy work. If they\u2019re doing otherwise, they\u2019re engaged in a sort of coup against the duly elected commander in chief. That presents a serious problem.<\/strong><\/p>\n If Biden is, instead, a dotard whose pronouncements on foreign affairs should be ignored in favor of the presumably more measured statements of unelected White House apparatchiks,<\/em>\u00a0then the office of president is effectively vacant. And that presents serious problems of its own.<\/p>\n A president incapable of serving should resign<\/a>. There seems no chance Biden will do that. Failing that, he can be removed using the 25th Amendment. Though there was a lot of talk about that amendment under the previous administration, we\u2019re not hearing much about it now.<\/p>\n Removal under the 25th Amendment is difficult and requires most of the Cabinet to go along. Worse, in our situation, it would mean replacing Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris, in whom most people have no more confidence. Harris\u2019 political career was short, and her stint as vice president so far has been unimpressive. Her speeches are, if anything, even less intelligible than Biden\u2019s.<\/p>\n (And next in line of succession is Nancy Pelosi, who, to put it mildly, isn\u2019t a comforting prospect as chief executive.)<\/p>\n So at a time of crisis, our nation is effectively leaderless. Nor is this an accident. The 2020 election was, if not rigged, at least heavily tilted in favor of Biden. Media and Big Tech companies blacked out criticism and allowed Joe to campaign from his basement, where he faced no tough questions. Harris also got a pass, because of her historic status.<\/p>\n Shortly after the election, Time magazine\u00a0bragged<\/a> about how a \u201ccabal\u201d of business and media and government folks \u201csaved\u201d the election by ensuring that Biden took office.<\/p>\n Now America has to live with the consequences.\u00a0Thanks, cabal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who\u2019s our real president? Joe Biden \u2014 or the staffers who keep walking back his comments? Is Joe Biden President? That\u2019s the question to ask after staffers walked back Biden\u2019s latest remarks on Taiwan. During his rather uneven \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Scott Pelley last weekend, Biden firmly and clearly announced that the\u00a0United States would … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-goobermint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85921"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85927,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85921\/revisions\/85927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}