Joe Biden held a press conference yesterday to introduce his choices for some very important cabinet positions. It is a glimpse into how Biden plans to govern and his policy priorities. What it showed was that the careerists are back. The Swamp will be alive and well during the Biden-Harris administration.
The press cannot be happier. Their guy won and some of their favorite people are back in power. Joe Biden introduced Antony Blinken as the nominee for Secretary of State, Alejandro Mayorkas for DHS Secretary, Linda Thomas-Greenfield for U.N. Ambassador, Avril Haines for Director of National Intelligence, Jake Sullivan for National Security Adviser and John Kerry for Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. There will be plenty to write about each and every one of these nominees because they are all career civil servants and in the case of Kerry, a career politician like his pal Joe Biden. This display of nominees was perhaps the swampiest line-up I have ever seen for a proposed presidential cabinet.
What was immediately noticeable was the press reaction to Biden’s choices. For instance, a panel discussion on MSNBC included Yamiche Alcindor, a PBS White House correspondent and frequent contributor on NBC and MSNBC. She told the show’s host Nicolle Wallace (a former GOP consultant) that she spoke with a Democrat who compared Biden’s announcements at the press conference as the arrival of The Avengers. This Democrat allegedly said, “It felt like we are being rescued from this craziness that we’ve all lived through in the last four years and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all.”
What we saw today, I was sitting in that room in Wilmington, I was thinking about the fact that Joe Biden in some ways, for his supporters, is fulfilling the promises that he made on the campaign trail,” Alcindor reported. “He said he wanted to have a cabinet that looked like America and there were people there on that stage, of course talking about all of their different accolades and their experience, but they were talking about their families who survived the Holocaust, who survived coming from Cuba and fleeing communists, talked about having Gumbo diplomacy, cooking food, cooking southern food as the United Nations Ambassador was saying. All of those things are what America is about, is this melting pot.”
“The other thing I’ll just say is I was talking to a Democrat who said this almost felt like the Avengers, it felt like we are being rescued from this craziness that we’ve all lived through in the last four years and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all,” Alcindor said.
PBS's @Yamiche: Biden's cabinet picks was like "The Avengers" —
"It felt like we are being rescued from the craziness and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all." pic.twitter.com/QLKlPG6RQt
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 24, 2020
Joe Biden and Linda Thomas-Greenfield made a point of saying that America is back. This is rhetoric we’ve often heard from Joe Biden from his basement during his campaign and now his nominees are reciting the talking point. The message is meant for people outside of America because it means that Biden and his top officials will take us back to the Obama administration’s policies and lead from behind. This, of course, insults at least half of the country who prefer to hold America’s interests above those of other countries, but you didn’t really think Joe Biden was serious about uniting the country, did you? What the Biden cabinet will do is return to a time when invitations to conferences in Davos and cocktail parties were more important than the interests of regular working Americans. For them, it is all about being liked, not being strong. Placating the rest of the world will take top priority. It’s how The Swamp works.
Biden made certain to repeat a favorite line of Democrats – his cabinet will be “a cabinet that looks like America.” That means identity politics takes precedent over anything else. Quotas are back at the highest levels. When Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke, she explained her idea of diplomacy was to bring people together at her home and cook dishes like gumbo. She’s from Louisiana and calls it Gumbo Diplomacy. That’s cute (I’m from Louisiana myself) but the warm and fuzzy approach she spoke about was contradicted by her snark to the Trump administration’s America First approach. Didn’t she get the Biden unity memo? When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about Greenfield’s ‘America is back’ riff during an interview with Bret Baier on Fox’s Special Report Tuesday night, Pompeo quickly listed the accomplishments of Trump’s foreign policy. Off the top of his head he mentioned ISIS (which was organized during the Obama administration) is destroyed, Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal and refused to appease Iran, held China accountable for the coronavirus and for bad trade deals, the peace accords in the Middle East, and creating coalitions to oppose Maduro and the Castro regime in Cuba. Of the Biden team, he said, “They live in a bit of a fantasy world.”
John Kerry’s re-emergence is predictable because Biden wants to be woke about climate change. So, he’s created a position for his old pal and made it a cabinet-level position. Even the title is ridiculous but that’s how Kerry regains relevance with the left – Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. It’s nonsensical. But, hey, Kerry gets all the trappings of the White House and a ticket to climate change conferences all around the world with celebrities and scientists with whom he agrees.
Tony Blinken’s confirmation hearings may be lit, y’all. Jonathan Turley was quick to remind followers on Twitter that Blinken has a role in Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling scandals.
The selection of Blinken for State is notable since he features in the Hunter Biden influence peddling scandal. When Biden wanted to trade on that influence he reportedly was able to easily arrange a meeting with Blinken who was deputy secretary of state. https://t.co/rcnWWzq6j2
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) November 24, 2020
Catherine Herridge tied Blinken to Biden corruption, too, as well as Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton’s email scandals.
Clinton's personal email server helped kick start FBI probe into the mishandling of classified information: 18 US Code §793, the Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information @CBSNews READ https://t.co/3AHmf3ygAN + https://t.co/YmfGjGSfqe
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) November 24, 2020
Biden’s gotten the band back together, y’all. It’s Obama’s third term. The Swamp is alive and well.
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