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Watch Biden Fall Apart, Thank AL Workers for Arming Russians, Praise Hungarian Resistance

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Good news, guys: President Joe Biden has everything under control in Eastern Europe.

We’re arming the Russians, according to the president, who made a trip to Alabama to praise the workers making the anti-tank missiles going to the country currently invading Ukraine. He also praised the brave Hungarian resistance to Russia in Ukraine. Which means we’re at war with … Hungary?

Confused? Yeah, so is Joe Biden.

In the latest of a series of presidential gaffes that have nothing to do with a “childhood stutter” or minor verbal infelicity, Biden on Tuesday told workers making Javelin missiles that his administration “made sure Russia had Javelins” and that “Hungarian” resistance to the invasion was critical, according to the New York Post.

(Here at The Western Journal, we’ve been documenting how frequent and concerning Biden’s gaffes are since the start of his campaign — when the establishment media outlets were staying mum on the subject. Even now, they don’t treat the president’s cognitive difficulty with the gravity they should. We do. You can help us by subscribing.)

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The gaffes came as Biden visited the Lockheed Martin plant in Troy, Alabama, a facility that produces Javelin missiles. The advanced anti-tank armaments have been much in the news of late because of their effectiveness in countering Russia’s ground forces.

“Before Russia attacked, we made sure Russia had Javelins and other weapons to strengthen their defenses so Ukraine was ready for whatever happened,” Biden said during the speech.

That was at the 16-minute point, about six minutes after any Biden address tends to get sloppy. Later in the remarks, he praised a Hungarian soldier who likely wasn’t Hungarian.

“Just a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal quoted a young Hungarian fighter saying, ‘Without the Javelins, it would have been very hard to stop the enemy pushing ahead,’” Biden said.

(To be fair, it’s possible Biden was confusing the current Ukraine resistance to Russian invaders with the heroic Hungarian resistance to the Soviet invasion of 1956. But to be accurate, 1956 was a long time ago, and not particularly relevant to current circumstances.)

Do you think Joe Biden is senile?

The Wall Street Journal’s piece last week actually quoted a man identified as Oleksandr, a private first class in Ukraine’s 128th Separate Mountain Assault Transcarpathian Brigade. Nothing identified him as Hungarian, and a White House transcript had the word crossed out and replaced with “Ukrainian.”

Elsewhere in the speech, Biden made it clear that he knew the belligerents in the conflict and which one we were behind, for whatever that’s worth.

“You’re allowing the Ukrainians to defend themselves. And quite frankly, they are making fools of the Russian military in many instances,” Biden said earlier in his remarks.

“A big part of the reason they’ve been able to keep up fighting and to make this war a strategic failure for Russia is because the United States together with our allies and partners have had their back.”

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And you can’t fault the president for lack of prescience, either. He knew that any embarrassing errors he made would be handled with kid gloves.

“By the way, sometimes — the press is always fair with me, but once — every once in a while, I make a mistake — not like — well, once a speech,” he said at the top of the address.

Whether or not the media is “fair” to him is another issue entirely, but “indulgent” might be the right word. CBS News’ headline from its coverage of the speech: “Biden tells workers producing Javelins, ‘You’re allowing the Ukrainians to defend themselves.'” No mention of Hungarian resistance or arming the Russians.

Meanwhile, contrast this with the media coverage and Twitter hashtaggery after former President Donald Trump messed up a name.

Speaking at a rally in Nebraska, Trump referred incorrectly to the candidate he had backed in Tuesday’s Ohio senatorial primary as “J.D. Mandel” as opposed to J.D. Vance, joining the candidate’s first name with the surname of his closest rival, Josh Mandel.

#DementiaDon trended on Twitter. Outlets like Business Insider dedicated entire hard news pieces to the gaffe. The nothingburger became as much of a somethingburger as the media and the left could make of it.

For the record, J.D. Vance beat Josh Mandel by a convincing 32 percent to 24 percent margin in the primary. While it didn’t show in The New York Times’ tabulation of the results, I’m sure “J.P.” got a few snarky write-ins.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with reporting on a gaffe like that if there’s some media consistency. There’s not — and this isn’t a recent phenomenon either.

The establishment media’s take on the two men who vied for the White House in the last election is best summed up by this quote from a David A. Graham piece in The Atlantic from September of 2020:

“Biden does sometimes sound old on the campaign trail, and he’s had a few head-scratching moments, but for the most part, he speaks cogently. Trump, by contrast, appears vigorous and energetic, but many of the things he says are incoherent.”

Just so nobody posits that Biden’s senility is a recent phenomenon, this was the future president in a 2019 Democratic debate and a 2020 remote television spot from his Delaware basement, respectively:

The president can’t hide in a Wilmington basement doing remote spots anymore, but he still keeps his remarks short, simple and, as much as possible, on script. Trump still gives extemporaneous stem-winders at his campaign-style rallies, meanwhile. Trump screwed up a name and it got the #DementiaDon treatment. Meanwhile, this has been Biden over the past week:

And then, of course, he was talking about the Hungarian resistance to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how we were arming the Russians, presumably to fight those brave Hungarian freedom fighters.

Not only is there something nakedly wrong with the president, but the mainstream media is wholly unwilling to call it that way, only giving air to Biden’s gaffes when absolutely necessary. With #DementiaDon, on the other hand, it’s a different matter.

I wonder why.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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