The world is going to hell with handbaskets handed out by the Biden administration and President Biden is making a fool of himself and the United States on tour in Ireland. In her Devine Online newsletter yesterday Miranda Devine checked in from Sydney, where it sounds like she may be on vacation. She does not take Biden’s claim to Irish heritage seriously. The “malarkey,” as she calls it, may be the least of Biden’s deficiencies — consider the shambles of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the erasure of our southern border, the promotion of racial discrimination and division, the illegal executive orders, the tyrannical assertion of power in the name of “climate change,” the woke and trans madness, etc. — but it is consistent with the pretenses and falsehoods that permeate his administration. Devine writes:
The president has chosen to make one of his few official state visits a self-serving family holiday to Ireland – with scandal-plagued First Son Hunter tagging along on Air Force One.
To be fair, Hunter’s role appears to be royal holder of the umbrella, as well as stopping his father wandering off and interpreting conversations he seems unable to fathom.
He was at Joe’s side as he met the Irish prime minister and other dignitaries. On Wednesday the president called on Hunter and his aunt, Joe’s sister Valerie, to stand up and be applauded at an event in Dundalk, near the border with Northern Ireland.
The arrogance is breathtaking. Hunter is under investigation over the millions of dollars he took from China in the family influence peddling operation. And here he is playing proxy to the world’s most powerful man. Sheesh.
In any case, Biden’s ostentatious Irishness is like his “devout” Catholicism, a performative self-indulgence. His surname is English, meaning, appropriately enough, “from the Shadow Valley.” He was not born in Ireland. Nor were his parents. Or grandparents. He has to go back to a great great grandfather on his mother’s side for his claim to Irish heritage, and he has almost as much English blood, despite his declared animus to the Brits.
Ed Condon put it best in the Spectator “Biden is as ‘Irish’ as Disney Land’s Magic Kingdom is ‘European.’
“For all his brandishing of rosary beads, Biden’s Catholicism is a mirage, blaring the colors and sounds of religion without its inconvenient truths… an ‘Irish Catholic’ schtick as authentic as green beer, masking total conformity to the modern morality of the secular left.”
The reemergence of Hunter is an extravagant touch. You have to think he’s trolling us or putting his belief in his invulnerability on public display. In any event, I have to credit Devine for the heading to this post.
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