Public Relations 101: When you're getting hammered by critics, give the media something else to talk about. After the worst week of his presidency so far, Joe Biden resorted to that ploy Thursday with his "Hey, look over here!" decision on public masking. The CDC, who really has no power to impose a mandate to begin with, chose this week to inexplicably lift its guidance for anyone who's vaccinated. The world is literally imploding, every bad Biden policy is coming home to roost, and suddenly, Americans are free to show their faces again. Coincidence? Hardly.
For the president, whose White House has been drowning in crises of his own making, the desperation is so thick you can smell it. In seven days, Biden has managed to flub his response to a nationwide gas shortage, a Middle East implosion, the border surge, job numbers, and soaring inflation. After refusing to hold a press conference on any of the other challenges facing the nation, Biden made room in his schedule to declare Thursday a "great day for America." "If you have been fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask," he announced. "Let me repeat, if you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask."
Interesting, Congressman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said. "Inflation is rising, the Middle East is in shambles, the working class can't fill up their gas tanks, our border is being overrun, and the Biden administration's leadership is nowhere to be found." But miraculously, the president has found time to take a victory lap on the vaccine? The political expediency wasn't lost on Republicans. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who, like most Americans, think Biden's COVID policies have been completely inconsistent and arbitrary, wanted to know: "Why today? The science hasn't changed."
Well, Senator Rick Scott's (R-Fla.) office pointed out, what has changed is the fallout from Biden's decisions. "I can only imagine that the President has had a terrible week as more and more Americans are realizing that his radical agenda is failing them and the country." Meanwhile, conservatives are firing back, we don't need the federal government telling us what we already know. It's Democrats -- not the rest of the country -- who've made a fool of themselves by wearing masks and distancing when they've been vaccinated. They, along with the CDC, are the ones who've grossly mismanaged the pandemic -- creating confusion and undermining the effectiveness of the shots. As recently as Tuesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was insisting that every American wear masks -- even outside. "This is absolutely crazy policy," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaksa) argued. Two days later, the same Walensky, who stunned senators by saying her vaccinated son couldn't go to summer camp, completely reversed herself.
But it's not just disjointed messaging that Americans despise -- it's the condescension attached to it. Most people are sick and tired of the president's absurd (and unenforceable) ultimatums. In a tone that rubbed plenty the wrong way, Biden tweeted, "The rule is simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do. The choice is yours." Give me a break, Federalist co-founder Sean Davis fumed. "There is no rule, and I have always had a choice to do either, both, or neither. Americans are citizens, not subjects." And besides, the CDC has absolutely no legal authority to make non-conformists pay. States and local authorities still control these outcomes. The rest is just theater, designed to distract the country from the dumpster fire of Biden's agenda.
Meanwhile, most of the country is probably under the impression that the White House is at least dealing with the problems privately that it doesn't want to discuss publicly. Wrong again. The president's focus this week wasn't stopping the border surge. It was making sure that people who identify as transgender cross first. No, this isn't Babylon Bee, it's an actual Homeland Security policy that makes "humanitarian exceptions" for gender-confused illegals. "This new system of putting families and transgender persons to the front of the line for asylum and border crossing began on 'a small scale in El Paso' last week and is expected to be put in place across the U.S.-Mexico border. In other words, claim that you're the opposite sex and you have a free pass into the United States.
It's almost as confounding as the Biden administration's other priority this week: transgendering the U.S. Air Force. While the global meltdown continues, our Pentagon's primary concern is making sure our airmen can self-actualize at taxpayer expense. "Instead of having to wait four years and get these procedures you think you might need, you can get your gender marker changed earlier, when you're stable in your gender," said Lt. Col. Bree Fram. "That's a huge benefit." But for whom? Certainly not for Americans, who will be footing the bill for procedures that can cost more than $110,000 each. Or for national security, which would have to divert important time and resources from the military's equipment, training, and actual warfighting to implement this.
But then, that's the mask that Joe Biden cannot let slip -- his insistence that he cares about this country, while simultaneously doing everything he can to destroy it.
