Biden’s light rinse

President Biden held a press conference for the ages in Hanoi yesterday. The White House has posted the transcript here.

The site of the press conference and Biden’s mental nullity reminded me of the comment frequently attributed to the late Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy about George Romney. I first heard it incorporated in comedian Mort Sahl’s routine in 1970 and I’m attributing it to him. I’m not sure that McCarthy didn’t borrow it from Sahl. (Attribution issues are discussed here by someone unfamiliar with Sahl’s routine of that era.)

Romney had launched a short-lived exploratory campaign in anticipation of the 1968 presidential election. He killed his nascent campaign when he complained in an interview broadcast in September 1967 that he had been “brainwashed” by the military brass into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour of Southeast Asia in 1965. Sahl observed that a light rinse would have sufficed.

I don’t think that was fair to Romney, but it was funny. In Biden’s case, however, it’s fair and unfunny. When it comes to the idiotic orthodoxies of the left, a light rinse has sufficed. He asymptotically approaches mentality zero.

Here is Biden in Hanoi on earth science and the coming global catastrophe of uncertain timeline:

For example — and I’ll end with this — there is more carbon absor- — absorbed from the atmosphere on a daily basis — and I’ll look to my — my friend, John Kerry, who’d forgotten more about this than most people know — correct me if I get this wrong, John, but I’m quite sure I’m right — and that is that there’s more carbon observed [absorbed] from the air into the Amazon region into the ground — the ground — than emitted in the entire United States on the same basis.

Now, imagine if people go in and do what we did 150, 200, 250 years ago and cut down the forest and the — start farming in that area, no longer have that great carbon sink. We — you know, it’s going — it would be a gigantic problem.

So, we should be going to areas, whether it’s in the Congo or other places, as — as the G7 nations and as the wealthy G20 nations, the — and providing the kind of infrastructure they need to be able to benefit.

And guess what? In addition to helping the environment overall — and the only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a — than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20 — 10 years. We’re — that’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.

We are in real trouble. There’s no way back from Hanoi Joe. His administration constitutes a wrecking ball aimed at us.

How bad was Biden’s press conference? It was so bad that KJP got out the hook.

Quotable quote: “But I tell you what, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed.”

BIDEN: "The only existential threat humanity faces — even more frightening than a nuclear war — is global warming" pic.twitter.com/fA8SzcYuZI

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 10, 2023