I ventured to the website of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement. Alas, I remain even more in the dark. I found a few articles and what seem like press releases. I found no reports or policy papers, which is odd because such is the main product of a think tank.
I did, however, find Joe Biden — everywhere. Biden’s grinning mug is splashed all over the thing. When you first open the website, you see Biden. When you click the first heading, labeled, “We’re Focused On,” you’re assaulted with some mindless mishmash about “Advancing the Dialogue of Internationalism.” The viewer is greeted by — surprise — two photos, both of Joe Biden. The first is a photo of, quite appropriately, old Scranton Joe and China’s Xi taking a friendly stroll together at some bridge near Beijing.
I say appropriately because, as readers know, the only thing maybe worth knowing about the Penn Biden Center is its possible shady connections with Xi and China. That being the case, I’m sort of surprised that whoever runs the website left that photo posted. Then again, the academic world moves very slowly. Perhaps they’re on sabbatical.
[The Penn Biden Center appears to have functioned somewhat like the Clinton Foundation did for Hillary in the years between Bill’s presidency and her 2016 presidential run. It kept key staffers employed by allowing big-money interests to shower the principals with cash for their “mission,” which as Kengor discovered, was mainly … raising cash. Besides, the idea of a Biden “think tank” is as comic an oxymoron as anything in politics. — Ed]
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