Joe Biden has made a lot of “gaffes” on the campaign trail since announcing his presidential run, but most of them have been in a certain kind of “in the moment” category. You know, he mispronounces words, veers into a weird story about turning on the radio for kids, or regales us with the casual racism of painting all black people with the same brush. But in his latest speech, Biden made what can only be considered a different kind of “gaffe” – the kind of miscalculation that he thought would actually make an effective argument against Trump.
At his speech announcing running mate Kamala Harris, Biden said his administration would address the national security issues that Trump has left lingering.
“And then we’re gonna get to work fixing the mess that President Trump and Vice President Pence have created, both at home and abroad,” Biden said. “Through four years of mismanagement and coddling of terrorists and thugs around the world.”
Wow. This is like Biden saying that he and Harris will finally put golden hair back in the Oval Office. It’s like him promising to finally bring some venom back to the presidential Twitter account. Why would he think this argument has any chance of landing? Of all the things to go after Trump on, he’s choosing terrorism? This is the commander-in-chief who put the nail in the coffin of ISIS, complete with cutting the head off the snake, and Biden is going to go in there and “fix” the “mess”? He’s accusing Trump of “coddling” terrorists?
The guy who was vice president to the man who wouldn’t even utter the words “Islamic terrorism” really said this?
Unreal.
Biden’s anemic efforts to portray himself as the man in this race who is strong on terrorism drew jeers from national security expert Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Husdon Institute.
“There isn’t enough spin in the world to claim the Trump admin has ‘coddled terrorists.’ He relaxed the [Rules of Engagement] so that the military could more effectively carry out a fast-tempo campaign. And the DoD rightly placed the blame for higher civilian casualties on ISIS,” she explained.
Obama’s biggest victory in the war on terror came on the night Seal Team Six executed the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hiding place in Pakistan. And granted, that was a big one. It’s just a shame that Biden – the sole administration member to argue against the raid – can’t take credit for it.
The world grew steadily more dangerous under the purview of President Obama. Those dangers will only multiply if we replace Trump with Joe Biden.
