Joe Biden’s Malarkey Maneuver The following story is brought to you courtesy of National Review. Click the link to visit their page and see more stories.
We’ll take a break from the pandemic and vaccination rollout today to turn our attention to the first major crisis of the Biden administration, now worsening by the day on our southern border. President Biden deploys what I call “the Malarkey Maneuver”; the Biden administration issues an unwritten gag order to U.S. Customs and Border Protection; and a House Democratic subcommittee chairman calls Kevin McCarthy a liar . . . when McCarthy turned out to be right. If only someone had foreseen that electing a Democratic administration would create the perception of amnesty and open borders across Central America!
Joe Biden and the Malarkey Maneuver
In his recent interview with George Stephanopoulos — you know, that guy who worked as a top communications aide in the Clinton White House when President Biden was a senator — Biden rejected the notion that his rhetoric or policy shifts prompted the current surge of migrants heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The idea that Joe Biden said, ‘Come’ — because I heard the other day that they’re coming because they know I’m a nice guy, here’s the deal, they’re not,” he said.
Call it the Malarkey Maneuver: When Joe Biden gets accused of something unsavory, he just emphatically insists it isn’t true and hopes that resolves the issue. “My son did nothing wrong!” “This never happened!” “You’re a damn liar!” “You’re a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!”
I guess that just like Vox and the Migrant Policy Institute, Biden thinks it’s just a coincidence that this migration surge intensified the way it did after he took office — and that it’s just a matter of post-pandemic economic conditions and the hurricanes. Has anyone read the New York Times to Biden?
[Enrique] Valenzuela, a coordinator for the Mexican government’s migration efforts in Chihuahua State, knew that if he couldn’t get to them to offer help, organized crime networks who prey on migrants’ desperation to extort or kidnap them for ransom probably would.
The migrants — nine adults and 10 children — wiped their tears as Mr. Valenzuela drew near. The moment was one of several such scenes of despair and confusion witnessed by New York Times journalists at the border over three days.
“The border is closed,” Mr. Valenzuela said. “Come with me, I will help.” He led the group to his office near the rusty border wall that separates El Paso from Ciudad Juárez, topped with miles of new concertina wire installed in the final weeks of President Donald J. Trump’s administration, officials said.
Jenny Contreras, a 19-year-old Guatemalan mother of a 3-year-old girl, collapsed in a seat as Mr. Valenzuela handed out hand sanitizer.
“I did not make it,” she sobbed into the phone as she spoke with her husband, a butcher in Chicago.
“Biden promised us!” wailed another woman.
Many of the migrants said they had spent their life savings and gone into debt to pay coyotes — human smugglers — who had falsely promised them that the border was open after President Biden’s election.
Sure, the human smugglers are lying to those they want to exploit. But if the human smugglers had told their victims that Donald Trump had opened the borders and was now welcoming workers from Central America . . . would any of those poor migrants have believed those claims?
When Biden took office and announced that he was pausing deportations for 100 days, that ICE would no longer deport immigrants for crimes such as driving under the influence and assault, and that he would cease border- fencing construction . . . didn’t that promise from the human smugglers seem a little more plausible?
Just a Little Administration Gag Order, Nothing to Worry About
NBC News offers accounts from Customs and Border Patrol agents that contend the Biden administration is now attempting to deal with the overwhelming influx of migrants by just making it harder for the news media to report on it:
The Biden administration is restricting the information Border Patrol agents and sector chiefs can share with the media as a surge of migrants tests the agency’s capacity at the southern border, according to four current and two former Customs and Border Protection officials.
The officials say the restrictions are seen as an unofficial “gag order” and are often referred to that way among colleagues. The officials requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media about the topic.
Border Patrol officials have been told to deny all media requests for “ride-alongs” with agents along the southern land border; local press officers are instructed to send all information queries, even from local media, to the press office in Washington for approval; and those responsible for cultivating data about the number of migrants in custody have been reminded not to share the information with anyone to prevent leaks, the officials said.
Multiple news organizations, including NBC News, have requested access to or photos from inside overcrowded border processing facilities holding unaccompanied migrant children; they have been denied.
Man, if the Trump administration did this, we would be hearing top-of-the- lungs screaming about a police state in which the administration abuses innocent people and hides it all, suppressing the truth with ruthless zeal. But it’s Biden, so . . . we’ll see how many people are really bothered by the White House issuing gag orders to the rest of the executive branch.
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