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WH Press Sec Believes Biden's Coal Comments 'Were Twisted' So Let's Give Them to You Straight

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Attention, undecided voters: The White House would like you to not believe your lying ears.

I know, it can be tricky at times. You hear the president — or another Democrat, for that matter — say something and you think to yourself, “Wow, that sounds bad.” But that’s just because you’re believing those lying ears. They’re a Democrat, duh. They can’t be saying bad things — particularly when compared with those “mega-MAGA Republicans,” whose every utterance is a “threat to democracy.”

This is especially true if, say, you’re in a coal-producing swing state like Pennsylvania or Ohio. Hoo, boy — if you’re in the Rust Belt, are your ears ever lying to you something fierce. Particularly if you think you heard President Joe Biden say that he was going to shut down coal-fired power plants during a speech in California on Friday.

Biden did nothing of the sort, obviously. Why, just listen to this statement from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after some people’s lying ears picked up a huge fib to that effect: “President Biden knows that the men and women of coal country built this nation: they powered its steel mills and factories, kept its homes and schools and offices warm,” she wrote. “They made this the most productive and powerful nation on Earth.

“The President’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense,” she continued. “The President was commenting on a fact of economics and technology:  as it has been from its earliest days as an energy superpower, America is once again in the midst of an energy transition.”

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Again on Monday afternoon, Jean-Pierre underlined that wavering voters mustn’t trust their mendacious eardrums: “It seemed like there was some confusion on that,” she said. “It was loud and hard to hear, I think — or maybe not exactly what — what was being said.”

“The president’s words, we believe, were twisted.  And we were very clear about that. And anyone who knows Joe Biden knows he comes from a coal country, from Scranton, Pennsylvania. His great-grandfather was a mining engineer, as you all know. President Biden knows that the men and women of coal country built this nation, and he has spent his presidency fighting for coal communities so that they too can benefit from the energy — from the energy transition we’re in right now.”

Can we believe a word Karine Jean-Pierre says?

So Joe Biden’s words were “twisted” by duplicitous ears, people! He didn’t say he was going to be shutting down coal plants all across America and replacing them with wind and solar.

What he actually said was that “we’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar” — at an event where it was really loud and hard to hear! As you can see, those are two completely different things:

I don’t get why anyone would come away from that clip thinking that Joe Biden intended to shut down coal-fired power plants — particularly anyone who is a voter in Pennsylvania and Ohio, two states that produce a lot of coal and where the Senate elections just happen to be close. Why, there seems to be a veritable rash of dishonest, perfidious auditory systems taking hold where Democratic candidates John Fetterman and Tim Ryan must win to preserve democracy, or so Joe Biden has told us. And why would he lie?

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(I mean, except about shutting down coal-fired power plants — which, to reiterate, is just your ears lying and twisting Biden’s words, not any sort of fibbing on the president’s part. Got it?)

Also, please don’t believe your ears if and when you hear any old clips of then-candidate Joe Biden literally advising coal miners to learn to code in 2019:

Wow, that’s some whopper your ears are telling you right now, am I correct? Some of you may be thinking that Joe Biden said that “anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for god’s sake!”

What he actually said was … something different. I’m sure. It was probably really loud there, too.

On top of this, there’s a whole rash of people on social media with the unmitigated gall to not only believe their ears, but to impugn brave truth-tellers like Karine Jean-Pierre by implying they’re engaged in an Orwellian cover-up for a senile president who lacks the filter to refrain from saying the quiet part out loud:

Hey — “Mostly Peaceful Memes” stole my line! And I think they’re using it sarcastically, too. (Sarcasm is the lowest form of comedy; it’s something I’d never stoop to engaging in. Don’t believe your lying sense of humor.)

Anyhow, this is the kind of disinformation that’s going to abound about Joe Biden now that Elon Musk is running Twitter. So let me set the story straight: Please don’t believe your ears if you’re in a Rust Belt state. Please also don’t believe those honkers if your energy bill has skyrocketed and you think it’s only going to get worse as Democrats try to force a transition to expensive renewables long before it’s necessary or prudent. If you’re concerned about America’s energy independence, for heaven’s sake, we beseech you, don’t believe the words that came out of Joe Biden’s mouth!

Those words were “twisted,” as you heard Karine Jean-Pierre say. And they’ll remain “twisted” until this election is over.

Then, on Nov. 9 — or Dec. 7, if the Georgia Senate race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker goes to a Dec. 6 runoff — the president’s words will go back to being bold and sensible energy policy designed to avert the “climate emergency” or “climate catastrophe,” or whatever Greta Thunberg is calling it this week. Those words will remain the president’s stated intention until people start paying attention to the 2024 election cycle in earnest. Then we’ll reassess.

We clear? Fantastic. I knew we could un-twist those ears if we just looked at this more closely.

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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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