President Joe Biden, whether he realized it or not, conceded on national television that former President Donald Trump was an effective dealmaker in relation to Afghanistan.
The deal Trump made with the Taliban was the reason, Biden said, “why no American was attacked” from February 2020 until Aug. 26, 2021, when ISIS-K struck.
That agreement benefitted Americans, of course, which was consistent with Trump’s overriding policy: America First.
In contrast, pretty much every move major Biden has made in office has weakened the United States, both domestically and abroad.
From his first day onward, a disturbing pattern has emerged of decisions that hurt the U.S. and helped our adversaries, including China and Russia.
One would assume it’s not because Biden is some sort of Manchurian president wanting to undermine our country, but his decision-making does call into question his competence to lead.
Recall the slew of executive orders issued on Day 1, which among other things, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and halted oil exploration on federal lands just as the U.S. had reached energy independence during the Trump years.
Additionally, Biden ended construction on the southern border wall and shut down the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, prompting the worst migrant crisis in 21 years.
Further, on that first day, Biden reinstituted the teaching of critical race theory/diversity training in the military after the Trump White House banned it.
Trump cut funding for any training based on CRT, white privilege “or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either … that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or … that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil,” according to Military.com.
By contrast, Biden, in his inaugural address, sought to divide Americans by charging the country is systemically racist. He continued on that drumbeat for months.
In April, the president alleged the very soul of America is racist, despite the nation being among the most diverse on earth, guaranteeing equal protection under its laws for everyone.
Last month, Gallup found Americans’ feelings about the state of race relations are at the lowest point in the more than two decades the polling firm has been measuring the statistic. A divided nation is a much weaker nation.
On the economic front, Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress appear intent on bankrupting the United States.
In March the president signed into law the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which garnered no Republican support, because so little of it actually had to do with addressing the pandemic, not to mention hundreds of billions remained unspent from previous COVID legislation passed last year.
Unsurprisingly, inflation hit an annual 5.4 percent rate in July, matching a 20-year high from the previous month. The price of gasoline, which is up approximately $1 per gallon from last year, is a major contributor to the inflation spike.
The massive government spending is also contributing to inflation: too many dollars chasing too few goods.
Further, much of it is being funded by the Federal Reserve printing money.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the federal deficit will be $3 trillion for the fiscal year 2021, as the national debt rapidly approaches $30 trillion.
This is clearly an unsustainable path, but Biden and congressional Democrats are undeterred.
This month, both chambers voted for a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, primarily aimed at launching multiple new entitlements, when the country cannot pay for the ones it already has.
“The big winner here is China because we are debilitating our own free enterprise system,” former Reagan administration economist and Trump adviser Stephen Moore told Fox News host Mark Levin earlier this month.
“And if these kinds of trends continue, and I never thought I would be saying these words, China will become the world economic superpower because our own Congress is bankrupting our country.”
Biden and the Democrats don’t plan to pay for all of these new entitlements with deficit spending; they want to substantially raise taxes on job creators, as well.
The president reportedly would like to see America’s corporate tax rate raised from a combined federal and state average rate of 24.6 percent enacted under Trump to 32.34 percent, well above China’s 25 percent.
In an opinion piece in the spring, former Vice President Mike Pence argued the beneficiary of this move would once again be Beijing.
“After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America gained 12,000 new factories, because employers were no longer driven away by an exorbitant tax burden,” Pence wrote.
But under the Biden plan, “Job growth will trickle to a standstill. Capital investments will be canceled. Fewer products will be Made in the USA. Manufacturers will pack up and head overseas, leaving a hole in the heart of blue-collar communities.”
“Worse yet, China stands to become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Biden tax hikes,” Pence added.
Communist China isn’t the only beneficiary of Biden’s policies; Russia gets in on the action too.
In May, the president announced no sanctions would be imposed to block completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as Trump had threatened to do. The pipeline will transport natural gas from Russia into Western Europe.
So Biden shut down the Keystone XL pipeline killing American jobs, citing climate change concerns, and greenlit Nord Stream 2, which benefits Russia economically and gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a leverage point over NATO allies like Germany.
Which takes us to the debacle in Afghanistan.
Viewing it from a macro level, America’s performance and acquiescence to the Taliban can only serve to embolden China and Russia to flex their muscles in places like Taiwan and Ukraine respectively.
The NATO allies who participated in the Afghan mission are furious and no doubt in distress over America’s terrible leadership and what that means going forward regarding global security.
The mistakes the U.S. made were catastrophic and just plain stupid. The military conducted its withdrawal during the height of fighting season, pulled its troops before civilians and closed the nation’s best airfield — Bagram — choosing instead to base out of Hamid Karzai International Airport, which has one runway and is located in the heart of an urban area.
Further Bagram Airfield — strategically located between China and Iran — was used for extensive intelligence gathering and counterterrorism operations.
To add insult to injury, The Wall Street Journal reported Putin informed Biden at their Geneva summit in June that he opposed the U.S. setting up similar capabilities in the nearby Central Asia nations like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. The Russian president added that China would also be against such a move.
So Biden apparently acquiesced to Putin’s wishes.
Media outlets that attempted to label Trump a Manchurian candidate — Russia, Russia, Russia — appear laughable now, especially in comparison to Biden.
The 45th president’s America First policies were actually the opposite of a Manchurian candidate.
Meanwhile, Biden has consistently implemented policies that have weakened the U.S., which ultimately is in the best interests of nations like China and Russia.
One would hope and assume he’s not a Manchurian president, which means he is just plain incompetent — a scary prospect too.