In the last few weeks, Biden, thinking about his legacy, has begun making public appearances and asserting that he is indeed the President with keys to the Oval Office and Air Force One, especially as the Harris campaign handlers seem eager to remove him from public view altogether.
Each time Biden makes himself relevant, he draws oxygen away from the Harris campaign. Each time he goes up on stage, Biden shows who is in charge, and with every speech, he reminds Americans that Harris was selected, not elected, to take on former President Donald Trump.
Recent events. A few things have happened on the international stage, where Biden is most comfortable, that brought him back to life from his extended vacation on Delaware beaches.
The United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York was a significant pivot. American Presidents always make the pilgrimage to this most august of meetings where world leaders (friends and foes) assemble under one roof. Biden fittingly went to the UN to address world leaders. His shaky style of delivery didn’t matter. The world was bidding farewell to a politician who had been around for over 50 years, including as the Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations, Vice President under Obama for two terms, and now as President.
Ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton created the Clinton Global Initiative, CGI has been inviting world leaders to speak when they are in New York. The event is a far more informal way to rub shoulders and make deals, with the CGI also looking for funding, sometimes controversial. Biden appeared at the CGI and accepted the Clinton Global Citizen Award.
The Bidens and the Clintons have known each other much longer than the Bidens have known Harris, which showed in Biden’s remarks. Addressing Bill Clinton, he said:
You’re a great friend, and CGI has actually transformed philanthropy. Hillary, I want to thank you—and I maybe shouldn’t do this publicly—but thank you personally for the way you have helped me and the way you’ve spoken up for me with such passion.
The Harris handlers were understandably furious. Why were the Clintons giving Biden an award when the Harris campaign has tried hard to relegate Biden to the heaps of history? Don’t the Clintons understand the Harris campaign’s “Turn the page” and “The New Way Forward” messages?
When already in New York, Biden decided he could make the best of it all. So he appeared on The View, an ABC News propaganda machine that has been very supportive of Kamala Harris. Biden raised eyebrows by saying how Kamala Harris was integral to his administration.
As vice president, there wasn’t a single thing that I did that she couldn’t do…so I was able to delegate her responsibility from foreign policy to domestic policy.
It was a powerful statement that threw cold water on the defensive statements made by the Harris campaign that she couldn’t do much for America for the last 3 1⁄2 years because she was the Vice President. A few days earlier, Michael Strahan of ABC’s Good Morning America, had asked Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband (Clip marker 04:31): “So, for those may criticize and say, well, she hasn’t done that for 3½ years when she was Vice President, do you think that was unfair?”
Emhoff: “She is the Vice President, not the President. The Vice President is there as a part of the administration, not leading the administration.” Biden took care of that response nicely.
Complicated Biden-Harris relationship since June 27: There has not been much love lost between Biden and Harris since the Atlanta debate on June 27, when Trump soundly beat Biden and ended his political career.
For nearly four weeks after June 27, Biden fought to keep his position as the Democratic Party nominee, having duly won 98% of the delegates. On July 1, Vanity Fair published a cover story featuring Jill Biden. But two interviews with ABC News and NBC News did not stem the tide of the mutiny developing within the Pelosi-Obama-Schumer-Jeffries cabal, urged on silently by Harris.
On July 21, at 1:46 PM ET, a slow Sunday, Biden announced on X that he had decided not to seek re-election and was stepping down as the party nominee. An agonizing 27 minutes later, Biden endorsed Harris as his choice for the Democratic nomination in a separate post on X. If Biden thought so highly of Harris taking over, wouldn’t he have included her name in the first post?
In the initial weeks of the Harris endorsement, Kamala did a lot to prove her loyalty. “We love Joe!” she cried out in one of her appearances. “We love our President!” she cried out at another rally. It was a Hollywood drama playing out in front of the cameras – and the Biden camp detested it. The Biden family knew how Pelosi had threatened Biden with using the 25th Amendment to dislodge him from office if he didn’t surrender the nomination. Biden was told that Harris had agreed to sign the petition, an extraordinary mark of disloyalty.
The bad blood only boiled in Chicago at the DNC. President Biden was asked to speak on the convention’s opening night, generally reserved for local party chiefs and unknowns. Worse, he was pushed way past his bedtime into a very late speaking slot. It was insult after insult. The President’s side took it all in stride and hurriedly left the convention hall to fly to Los Angeles.
Harris had moved on, forgetting that Biden even existed. Whenever asked how she would be different from Biden should she win, her first response, always with a cackle, was, “Well, you can see I am not Joe Biden.” She would resort to her standard “Ambitions-Aspirations-Dreams” nonsense and point to how she wanted to “Turn the page” and take the country forward in a new way.
Direct body blow. The Biden team couldn’t stand it anymore. And, on Friday, they pounced.
Harris had announced she would go to the border for a photo opportunity. Even before she landed, the acting chief of Biden’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement had released a letter to Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican Congressman. Gonzalez’s request for immigrant data had been sitting with ICE for more than six months. Why did ICE release the information to coincide with Harris’s visit to the border?
The letter was explosive, enough to sink any campaign. It said that under Harris, the border czar, America had caught and released into the country over 662,000 migrants with criminal records. Worse, more than 15,000 of them were murderers convicted in their home countries, and 16,000 were convicted of sexual assault. Other crimes included 100,000 assaults, 70,000 drug violations, 90,000 invasions of privacy, and 16,000 weapons offenses.
Trump has been saying for years that other countries have been emptying their prisons to dump illegal immigrants into America and have been, as usual, scorned by the media. Now, Biden’s administration was confirming Trump’s charge. It was like Biden again wearing the Trump MAGA hat, as he had done at a firehouse in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
In recent TIPP polls conducted in battleground states, Trump has been leading Harris by 20 points on immigration, the second most important issue to American voters after the economy. With the new information, Trump’s lead will only widen.
Biden has also signaled he will take a victory lap tour celebrating his legacy, complicating Harris’s efforts to distance herself from the Biden record.
The Democratic Party infighting is now running on steroids.
TIPP Takes
Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, And More
1. Netanyahu Says Killing Of Hezbollah Leader Was ‘Necessary’ As Biden Voices Support – UPI
In an official statement following the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s death in a targeted aerial strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had “settled accounts with someone who was responsible for the murders of countless Israelis and many nationals of other countries, including hundreds of Americans and dozens of French.”
President Biden voiced his support for the stunning Israeli move, which has brought vows of revenge from Hezbollah, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
2. IRGC General Died In Israeli Strike That Killed Hezbollah Leader: Reports – A.P.
A prominent general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps died in an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Iranian media reported.
The killing of Gen. Abbas Nilforushan further ratchets up pressure on Iran to respond, even as Tehran has signaled in recent months that it wants to negotiate with the West over sanctions crushing its economy.
3. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Transferred To Secure Location: Sources – Reuters
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been transferred to a secure location inside the country with heightened security measures in place, two regional officials briefed by Tehran told Reuters.
The sources said Iran was in constant contact with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other regional proxy groups to determine the next step.
4. U.S. Officials Have Seen Israeli Military Posture Changes On Lebanon Border – Al Arabiya
The Israeli military posture observed on Saturday differed from that of the previous day, leading officials to reconsider whether Israel might be preparing for an invasion.
“We don’t know exactly what they’re planning. It’s their operation,” said one U.S. official, who spoke anonymously. “This could change again by tomorrow, but right now, it’s different than yesterday.”
5. Hamas Says Hassan Nasrallah ‘Assassination’ Will Only Strengthen Resistance – Reuters
Asked how Nasrallah’s death would affect the fight against Israel, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said: “The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah will not break the will of the resistance and we are confident that the occupation will lose the battle,” said Abu Zuhri.
Nasrallah’s death marks a heavy blow to Hezbollah as it reels from an escalating campaign of Israeli attacks. It is also a huge blow to Iran, given his major role in the Tehran-backed regional “Axis of Resistance.”
6. Blinken Redoubles Calls For Pressing N. Korea, China, Iran To Stop Aid For Russia’s War In Ukraine – Yonhap
Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked during a press conference in New York to attend the high-level week of the U.N. General Assembly.
“At the Security Council on Tuesday, the overwhelming majority of countries condemned Russia’s brutal war of conquest and called for a just and lasting peace on the basis of the U.N. Charter,” the secretary told reporters.
7. Moldova Accuses Russia Of Trying To Rig Its EU Referendum – Politico
Moscow has unleashed millions in cash and an army of social media accounts to try to prevent Moldova from joining the EU, one of the country’s top officials has cautioned.
The Kremlin’s intelligence agencies, he said, are “flooding the political landscape with clone parties and candidates, from pro-Russian to phony pro-European,” Moldova’s national security adviser, Stanislav Secrieru said. Brussels has deployed a civilian mission to the Eastern European nation to help build resilience against hybrid threats from Russia.
8. China Holds Drills Near Disputed South China Sea Reef – D.W.
Chinese ships and planes conducted patrols around the flashpoint Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea as Beijing continues to assert its claims to almost the entire waterway against the will of several other countries in the region.
The maneuvers come after several tense maritime confrontations, particularly with the Philippines, in recent months. It also coincided with joint exercises by the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Philippines in Manila’s exclusive economic zone.
9. China Denies U.S. Claim That Its Newest Nuclear Submarine Sank At Pier – UPI
The newest nuclear-powered submarine in China’s fleet sank in spring while docked at a pier, but Chinese government officials have taken steps to cover it up, according to U.S. officials.
The BBC reported that at a news conference in Beijing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said he was not familiar with the topic and did not provide any information when asked about it.
10. Pro-China ‘News’ Part Of Wider Influence Push – A.P.
China’s operation’s key tactic is networks of websites purporting to be legitimate news outlets, delivering pro-China coverage that often parallels official statements and positions from Beijing.
Shannon Van Sant, an adviser to the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, tracked a network of dozens of sites that posed as news organizations. One site mimicked The New York Times, using a similar font and design in what she called an attempt at legitimacy. The site carried strongly pro-Chinese messages.
11. Taiwan Chipmaker PSMC Abandons Japan Plans After India Deal – Nikkei Asia
Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (PSMC) is pulling out of plans for a Japanese chip plant as the company shifts its focus to a technology partnership in India that will put less strain on its finances.
PSMC has told the Japanese financial services group SBI Holding that it is unwilling to take on the risks associated with the Japan project. The two companies will dissolve a partnership they had formed to build the facility in northeastern Japan’s Miyagi prefecture.
12. Afghan Taliban Shuts Down London Embassy – RFE/RL
The Afghan Embassy in London closed its doors as scheduled on September 27 after staff members were fired by the country’s de facto Taliban rulers looking to break ties with diplomats who had remained loyal to the ousted government.
The staff had announced earlier that the move was “made based on the requirements of the host country’s authorities,” following similar action by other countries that had allowed the diplomatic outposts to operate despite lacking ties to the Taliban, which seized power from the Western-backed government in August 2021.
13. Study Finds ‘Weekend Warrior’ Workouts As Beneficial As Daily Exercise – HealthDay News
Researchers reported in the journal Circulation that people who get all their weekly recommended exercise in one or two days are about as healthy as those who spread their workouts more evenly throughout the week.
Guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week but how a person gets those minutes each week has remained an open question.
“Because there appears to be similar benefits for weekend warrior versus regular activity, it may be the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most,” said co-senior researcher Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist.
14. Study: Most Pregnant Women Will Become Iron Deficient – HealthDay News
A new study finds that four out of five pregnant women will become deficient in an essential nutrient, iron, by their third trimester.
The researchers and other experts are now advocating that iron levels be routinely checked during pregnancy for the safety of a mother and her baby. Depleted iron levels can, in the worst-case scenario, lead to anemia, which has long been tied to a heightened risk for postpartum depression, postpartum hemorrhage, preterm birth, low birth weight, and small-for-gestational-age birth.
Republished with permission from TIPP Insights
