The Telegraph’s Nick Allen reports that President Biden vows to remember what they’re saying about him over in the scepter’d isle. This is how it goes:
Joe Biden “will remember” comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the UK, and will “bear a grudge” against Britain, sources told the Telegraph.
It came after Cabinet insiders were quoted as suggesting the US president “looked gaga” and described him as “doolally” in the wake of the fall of Kabul.
“The Brits have their view. But they should be careful. What’s been said is offensive and he will remember it. He actually has a long memory,” a US source told the Telegraph.
“It’s always been his way that if somebody says something really bad to him, or about him, he doesn’t speak to them again. He does bear grudges. Boris Johnson should know that.”
The source added: “The president is not ‘gaga’. He’s actually picked up his game quite a bit since the campaign.”
Comments by Cabinet insiders calling Mr Biden “gaga” were first printed in the UK, but were repeated in the Washington Post and read in the White House.
It’s almost funny. Any threat that Biden will “remember” emanating from the vicinity of the White House should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Would anyone who knows what he’s talking about assert that Biden “actually has a long memory”? Only behind a deep veil of anonymity.
Would any White House source go to the trouble of denying that Biden is “gaga”? That still leaves “doolally.”
Would any White House source make a statement to the effect that “[Biden has] actually picked up his game quite a bit since the campaign”? We can see with our own eyes and we know we are in the midst of an epic disgrace. Perhaps Biden should have remained in the basement, or perhaps that is a backhanded concession of Biden’s ordeal: you should have seen him last summer.
Yet the Brits have introduced a Wodehousean element to their criticism of the president. If Biden had the sense of Bertie Wooster, he would take a cue from the stand-ins for Jeeves and listen up. In its own way the Telegraph story comes as a shaft of light in an incredibly dark chapter of American history.
🇺🇸Joe Biden "will remember" comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the UK, and will "bear a grudge" against Britain, sources told the Telegraph
Read more: https://t.co/08U4mGjIXU
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 29, 2021
PAUL ADDS: Ronald Reagan believed America should reward its friends and punish its enemies. Joe Biden has rewarded the Taliban and wants to punish the Brits.
Is this a sign of diminished capacity? I don’t think so. I think it signifies a pettiness, and indeed nastiness, that has always characterized the man.
For Biden, it’s not about America’s friends and enemies. It’s about his friends and enemies.
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