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President Joe Biden participated in the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon from the White House on Monday, appearing for fewer than ten minutes for what should have been a gravy — or, perhaps, easy as pie — public event. Instead, the brief appearance reminded us all of what we already know: Biden is not capable of handling the basic duties required to be president and would probably be better served handing out smiley face stickers to Walmart shoppers.
Coincidentally, today’s pardon took place on Biden’s eighty-first birthday. White House staff were apparently eager to get ahead of chatter about the president’s age and included several jokes about it in his script. Unfortunately, there was nothing funny about Biden reminding everyone that he is well beyond the average American life expectancy with the cognitive abilities of someone much older. While introducing the chairman of the National Turkey Federation and his family, Biden noted that they “sang birthday to me.” He later quipped that “it’s difficult turning sixty.”
“This is the seventy-sixth anniversary of this event, and I want you to know I wasn’t there at the first one. I was too young to make it up,” the president said with a forced chuckle.
A vast majority of Americans believe Biden is too old to be president, but this sentiment has less to do with his numerical age and more to do with his constant bumbling. At the turkey pardon, Biden confused Taylor Swift with Britney Spears, ignoring whatever was actually on the teleprompter to instead refer to “Britney’s tour,” adding, “She’s down … it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now.” Sorry, Swifties. Never mind the fact that the scorching temperatures in Rio de Janeiro are hardly a punchline, considering one of Swift’s fans died in the sweltering heat during Friday night’s show.
Confusing two blonde pop stars might be a low-stakes error, but Biden’s mental deficiencies are a lot scarier when they lead to massive blunders on the world stage. Last week, a viral clip showed secretary of state Antony Blinken wincing in pain when Biden referred to Xi Jinping as a “dictator” while the Chinese president was standing just a few feet away. The White House has constantly had to clean up Biden’s foreign policy remarks, such as when he called for a regime change in Russia, asserting, “[Putin] cannot remain in power,” and when he pledged to defend Taiwan militarily against China, seemingly abandoning the US’s longstanding “strategic ambiguity” policy.
Biden’s team might have hoped their floundering leader would make it through Monday’s pardon of Liberty and Bell with little incident, but it is the president who keeps coming out of these events looking like the turkey.
-Amber Duke
On our radar
SORRY MRS. CARTER President Bill Clinton’s social media team accidentally attached a statement about the passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein to an X post memorializing former first lady Rosalynn Carter on Sunday. The post was quickly deleted.
RFK ON TOP A Harvard CAPS-Harris survey found that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the highest net favorability rating among all of the remaining presidential candidates.
IS CREEPY UNCLE JOE BACK? President Joe Biden was panned for guessing that a six-year-old girl might have been seventeen during a “Friendsgiving” meal with service members on Sunday.
Nikki Haley’s romp in the swamp
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is trying to raise more money for her campaign after a few highly-rated debate performances led to a bump in the polls, and she’s not being picky about the source of the new funds. Last Monday, the former UN ambassador joined a group of Washington, DC lobbyists for a roundtable and reception.
Bloomberg Government previously reported on the fundraising event in early November, and The Spectator has since obtained its own copy of the invitation. According to the invite and attached donation form, attendees had to pay $3,300 to join the VIP roundtable and $1,000 for the reception. Sponsors for the event featured several principals at DC-based BGR Group, a “premier, bipartisan” lobbying firm that did $30 million in business last year, according to OpenSecrets. Other sponsors included Ozzie Palomo, a lobbyist with Chartwell Strategy Group who lobbied on behalf of the Georgian government and a political party in Romania. Although Haley once said she wants to ban all foreign lobbying, she doesn’t seem to have any trouble taking money from those who engage in the practice: BGR has lobbied for the governments of Azerbaijan, India, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and more, according to FARA documents.
–Cockburn
Candace Owens ‘obsessed with her own fame,’ says Horowitz Center
She’s just asking questions! Fresh from her spat with Ben Shapiro, the founder of the Daily Wire, the conservative site that hosts her podcast, Candace Owens has earned a stinging rebuke from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, at whose 2017 conference she first met Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s Turning Point USA movement served as the springboard for her career as a right-wing pundit.
“Instead of focusing on the meaningful activism and defense of American values that brought her to our attention, Candace Owens has become obsessed with her own fame, stirring up drama to compensate for a lack of real achievement,” the Horowitz Center statement reads. “Her comments about Israel and her promotion of people like Andrew Tate are part of a pattern. Candace tackles a subject she knows nothing about, never bothers to learn anything about it, and then rides the backlash by playing the victim to generate more fame and money. What a tragic misuse of talents.”
Yikes. Yet Cockburn can’t help but wonder if “stirring up drama” was exactly what the Horowitz Center had in mind for Owens when it assisted in her ascent…
-Cockburn
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