If you’ve wondered who’s paying for all the people hospitalized with COVID-19, the answer sometimes is — you.
A Seattle man who spent two months in the hospital battling COVID-19 just got a 181-page bill for $1.12 million for treatment of the virus. Michael Flor, 70, was admitted to Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah, Washington, on March 4 and spent 62 days in the facility before finally recovering and being discharged.
“Flor, 70, who came so close to death in the spring that a night-shift nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes, is recovering nicely these days at his home in West Seattle. But he says his heart almost failed a second time when he got the bill from his health care odyssey the other day,” the Seattle Times reported. “‘I opened it and said ‘holy [bleep]!’ Flor says.”
The bill featured almost 3,000 itemized charges, an average of about 50 for each day of his hospital stay. He was billed $408,912 for 42 days in the intensive care room, which was equipped with a special isolation chamber, and $82,215 for ventilator use, which lasted 29 days.
“Just the charge for his room in the intensive care unit was billed at $9,736 per day,” The Times reported. “Due to the contagious nature of the virus, the room was sealed and could only be entered by medical workers wearing plastic suits and headgear. For 42 days he was in this isolation chamber, for a total charged…of $408,912.”
The Seattle Times reported that Flor’s condition grew very serious “for the two days when Flor’s heart, kidneys, and lungs were all failing and he was nearest death.” During that time, he received treatments by doctors for which he was billed nearly $100,000.
Because Flor is 70, he has Medicare, a federally funded health care program paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Plus, there are special financial rules enacted in place by Congress amid COVID-19. Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, both approved in April, private health issuers and employer group health plans must “cover COVID-19 testing and services furnished during the pandemic, with no out-of-pocket expense.”
“As a result, Flor probably won’t have to pay even his Medicare Advantage policy’s out-of-pocket charges, which could have amounted to $6,000,” The Times wrote. “The insurance industry has estimated treatment costs just for COVID-19 could top $500 billion, however, so Congress is being asked to step up with more money.”
Still, the money’s got to come from somewhere, so check your wallet.
Flor told The Times he was surprised at his own reaction: guilt.
“I feel guilty about surviving,” he said. “There’s a sense of ‘why me?’ Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor’s guilt.”
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
HBO host Bill Maher says the “defund the police” movement being pushed by liberal Democrats is a “terrible idea” and will prompt more Americans to vote for President Trump in November.
“Liberals want to take police money, police funds and divert it to community services, which sounds like a very good thing, good idea,” Maher said Friday during the opening monologue of his show “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“But they’re calling it ‘defund the police,’ which sounds bad!” he said.
“That is so Democrats for you,” Maher said. “They must have meetings to be this f****ing stupid about politics. ‘Hey, guys. We’re making some headway here. Um, how can we turn this into something that makes people have to vote for Trump?’”
Maher also said that Democrats might be moving too far left, which could be bad on Election Day.
“I worry that Democrats are wandering into another purity test that’s not going to serve them well,” Maher said. “And it’s going to be about how much you want to get rid of police altogether.”
Trump has been teeing off on the “defund the police” slogan. “However, top Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), quickly distanced themselves from the phrase,” The Hill reported.
“The slogan may be misleading without interpretation,” Rev. Al Sharpton said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this past week, adding that he understood the phrase to be more about deep-rooted reform efforts. “I don’t think anyone other than the far extremes are saying we don’t want any kind of policing at all,” he said.
But the need to explain the meaning behind the wording comes with its own set of critics. “If you’re explaining, you’re losing, and there’s a lot of explaining going on,” Meghan McCain, a right-leaning commentator said on ABC’s “The View.” “If you mean reform, say reform. If you mean defund, say defund. People are confused,” she added.
Maher has warned that Americans had better put aside their political differences or “there will be blood.”
“This year, just celebrate Thanksgiving. Don’t try to win it. And never forget the single shining truth about democracy: it means sharing a country with ***holes you can’t stand,” Maher said in November.
Maher said politics have gotten ugly, especially with the explosion of social media.
“It’s no longer enough to just make a point,” he said. “You have to destroy. You have to own people. Except the person who gets owned doesn’t change their mind. They just make a mental note never to interact again with DM_Me_Your_T*tties.”
“Lately we’ve been hearing more and more about a second civil war, which sounds impossible in this modern, affluent country. It is not,” Maher said. “We talk about Trump as an existential threat, but his side sees Democratic control of the government the exact same way. When both sides believe the other guy taking over means the end of the world, yes, you can have a civil war.”
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
One of the talking points that continually comes out of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Media Complex is that the Republican Party is racist or filled with white supremacists because people support law enforcement officers and don’t immediately bend the knee to the rage bomb. Most of them seem to forget, however, that it was the Republican Party that pushed for freeing black slaves, which lead our nation to the American Civil War. It was President Abraham Lincoln – a Republican – that delivered the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republican Party that championed the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that created desegregation in schools. Democrats were against all of those things yet they are somehow put on a pedestal as if they have always advanced the needs of African Americans.
Former DNI Richard Grenell joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures this weekend.
This comes after Ric turned over his position as America’s Director of National Intelligence over to incoming DNI John Ratcliffe.
Ric told Maria Bartiromo there were multiple people from multiple agencies who were raising red flags. However, those voices were pushed aside, classified and never shown to the public. Ric urged viewers to read the footnotes in the IG Report on FISA abuse to learn more about the warnings that were ignored or purposely disregarded by the intelligence community on the bogus Russia collusion investigation. Said Ric, “Transparency is what the American people demand and is what Washington DC is very uncomfortable with.”
Richard Grenell: I think the Transition period is key. And once Donald Trump won the election in 2016 all the way through to inauguration… That’s when we’re supposed to have the Obama administration or the current administration begin to hand off and have a transition time. That’s why we have an election in November and an inauguration in January. It’s for a peaceful transition of power. That was blown by the Obama administration. And I just don’t think that unmasking during the transition period is appropriate. Especially at the levels they did.
Barack Obama was the first president in over 200 years to sabotage the incoming administration. The Obama team spied on, unmasked, leaked and spread complete lies in order to sabotage the incoming Trump administration.
In an effort to replicate the “Seattle Autonomous Zone” in cities nationwide, protesters took to the streets of Asheville, North Carolina, Portland, Oregon, Nashville, Tennessee, and Chicago, Illinois, over the weekend. Warned by what’s happening in the “CHAZ,” though, police departments were quick to shut down those efforts.
In Nashville, the effort was over before it even began.
“Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued a warning hours before protesters are planning to take over an area outside the Capitol,” local news in Nashville reported Saturday. “Nashville autonomous zone ‘will not be tolerated,’ Lee said in a statement, citing that camping on state property is prohibited by law and it will be enforced.”
Occupying state property is a misdemeanor in Tennessee and despite organizers encouraging protesters to show up with “tents,” “food,” and other necessities, an autonomous zone never materialized.
In Asheville, members of law enforcement were on hand as demonstrators built their temporary lodgings on Livingston street in the center of the city and dismantled the autonomous zone just hours after protesters declared themselves immune from the laws of the United States.
Police dismantle an Antifa “autonomous zone” in Asheville, NC. Not today, stalin. pic.twitter.com/xWeepUDxkp
Protesters were shocked that, unlike in Seattle, the Asheville city government was unwilling to tolerate their continued presence.
“Update on #Asheville autonomous zone. Every cop in Asheville showed up, proving they have nothing better to do on a Friday night. Tore down barricade. As of 11pm est, <100 demonstrators remaining. Need more people & support. Many will be back tmrw. This is only the beginning,” one would-be autonomous zone citizen wrote on Twitter.
Police responded to continued threats of occupation with a statement about blocking public streets. “Blocking a roadway is not only illegal,” they noted, “but dangerous for both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.”
Portland protesters received the same treatment. Cops dismantled the “autonomous zone” almost as quickly as it was erected.
“Portland protesters attempting to establish an “autonomous zone” similar to the one in Seattle abandoned it shortly after erecting it,” the Washington Examiner wrote late last week.
“Footage from Wednesday night shows hundreds of rioters in the city erecting a makeshift fence to cordon off an area,” the outlet reported. After a clash with law enforcement, though, protesters gave up. “By early Thursday morning, protesters had dispersed, according to police.”
Chicago’s tiny “autonomous zone” is hanging on, but probably not for long. The “occupation” is of a single building on the University of Chicago’s campus — the headquarters of UChicago’s campus police department — and it is quickly running out of resources after law enforcement officials, who are still in charge of their own offices, refused to allow the interlopers to use their bathrooms or have outside food delivered.
University of Chicago police are blocking the doors, preventing us from getting access to food, water, & bathroom breaks during our peaceful sit in. Folk bought pizza and we can’t get it. Call 773-702-8181 and DEMAND that they stop blocking the doors. #WeKeepUsSafe#HydeParkpic.twitter.com/h8Mxkg8BjR
— Abolition is a Presence Asha AE ? (@Asha_2A) June 12, 2020
To be clear, the graduate students are occupying the police department’s building — they are not outside — and did not come prepared for a long-term engagement. Forced to tangle with cops who weren’t willing to allow the protesters to use their facilities, they resorted to defecating in a designated location within the building.
Protesters inside and around a new “autonomous zone” at the University of Chicago Police Department are urinating and defecating inside a tent in the room. pic.twitter.com/QzZICTiKlA
In Seattle, the “autonomous zone” experiment goes on, supported by city officials who deemed the protest a “summer of love.”
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
To those paying attention, the evidence about Covid-19 and the lockdown response is clear. We’ve been sold a pup.
The UK Government itself has confirmed several times that the virus is not serious to the majority of people who catch it. The lockdown was a panic-driven overreaction.
The facts and figures of what is known about Covid-19 are not really much disputed. More, it’s a question of how those facts translate into ways to deal with the threat. My contention is that anyone looking at the facts, figures, and basic science cannot possibly agree that the response to the crisis is appropriate to the risk and proportionate in terms of wider implications.
For example, in the UK the infection rate has receded, there’s been no evidence of a link between infection rates and social distancing, lockdown, and the wearing of masks It’s all been guesswork.
Yet the UK government has just declared it mandatory for the public to wear masks on public transport from 15 June 2020. That makes no sense whatsoever. Even the World Health Organisation (WHO), from which the government cherry-pick their guidance to reinforce ‘trust the experts’ narratives, for months advised that it was not necessary to wear masks. The WHO curiously U-turned on this in recent days.
So far, most of the public aren’t picking up on these anomalies, or at least when they do, it doesn’t particularly register with them, perhaps because of the continued media avalanche of misinformation, distraction, and scaremongering.
If people are told by the media that social distancing works, they seem to accept it, even if a brief reflection would make them realise there’s no evidence that lockdown translates into lower infection rates, particularly when there are so many other factors and unknowns in play.
So, it’s not really about going over the facts and figures or science anymore. It’s about merely getting the obvious conclusions, so far largely kept from the public, out there.
Therefore, how do we achieve this and get out of this lockdown mess to begin repairing the terrible damage caused to date?
Just the other day, Professor Ferguson, whose forecasts were central to the lockdown decision, basically admitted that lockdown made no difference when it came to containing Covid-19.
Great, so we can go back to normal?
Unfortunately, this huge admission only made it to the middle pages of a few newspaper publications. The rest of the media missed the story and continued with their usual brain-dead output.
But, perhaps we can get the government to admit they acted upon wrong advice and the lockdown was a mistake?
Well, hold on there. No one likes to admit they’re wrong, particularly when the errors are huge and so stupid beyond belief. That’s never going to happen voluntarily, at least without some encouragement or a sweetener.
Perhaps, however, there’s a chance. The proposal below is simple and quick. It gets us out of lockdown without too much recrimination. And the idea may have further appeal to the government because it will give them a sense of ultimate power (we know they love that). Hopefully it will mean that we can all move forward – back to the old normal.
SYNN (SAY YES, NOT NO)
First, for background, I used to work for a company which was customer-facing and focused on customer service with a unique passion and pragmatism. The motto was something like “the customer is right, even when they are wrong”. As a complaints manager, there were sometimes difficult cases to resolve.
The company, however, began a new initiative. It was called SYNN (Say Yes, Not No), where we were encouraged to be even more flexible to resolve difficulties and complaints.
The complaint managers were issued with SYNN cards to carry around to remind them. These cards gave us the authority and final say to resolve any difficulty or complaint in the way that we decided. Not even the managing director could overrule us (unless we were offering his chauffeur-driven car as compensation to a customer).
Before this initiative, I felt we were generally good at resolving complaints, but these cards were great because there often was an issue that we knew would take time to resolve. So, if we couldn’t initially resolve the matter, we could say, what the hell, and give the customer what they wanted.
I thought this was a great initiative even if it meant in some cases that we were encouraging the wrong behaviour or sometimes went against a principle.
SYNN was our licence to be powerful and pragmatic, and it was great for avoiding drawn-out confrontations and moving on quickly.
THE PROPOSAL
The idea is to arrange for members of the UK government to be issued smart-looking SYNN cards.
Then Boris Johnson and government ministers armed with these cards should do a live TV press conference where the following questions would be put to them:
Were the initial projections of infection and mortality for Covid-19 hopelessly wrong?
Therefore, was the blanket lockdown unnecessary given any limited adverse impact the virus would have had without it?
Is it true that the “trust the science” narrative throughout was not based on science but on faulty models and guesswork?
Do you agree that rather than act on fear and panic, it would have been wise to implement specific but limited measures, based broadly on the Sweden model?
Do you agree, as some scientists have said (and quite frankly is common sense), that any such measures should have been directed towards “close and prolonged contact” and “at risk groups” rather than for shoppers, walking in parks, and blanket social distancing — and this was an assessment which should have been carried out at the outset?
Do you agree that the whole thing has been a complete fiasco from start to finish and you and the media have instilled unnecessary fear and panic to the public and utterly dumbed down any sensible discussion — and have not focused on the real question – i.e is lockdown necessary and proportionate?
Finally, can we now lift lockdown, as well as apply and keep under review some limited and targeted precautions (vulnerable groups, close contact risks) in agreement with a panel of real experts?
Mena Dyaha Yousif and her boyfriend Jose Felan, Jr. (ATF)
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is offering two rewards of up to $5,000 each for information that leads to the apprehension of a man and/or his girlfriend.
The couple was caught on camera lighting fires in Minneapolis during the rioting and looting by violent leftists last month.
Here is the video link of the two lovers during the riots two weeks ago.
Mena Dyaha Yousif and her boyfriend Jose Felan, Jr. are "on the run" after fires were set to several businesses — Here is video of the couple during the riots in MN… (atf) pic.twitter.com/lof3HPG3cr
Federal officials are offering a big reward for information leading to the arrest of a couple wanted in connection to the fires during recent riots in St. Paul, Minnesota, following the death of George Floyd.
Mena Dyaha Yousif and her boyfriend Jose Felan, Jr. are “on the run” after fires were set to several businesses, according to a statement released Thursday by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A reward of $10,000, $5,000 for each person, is being offered for information leading to the apprehension of the pair. They are believed to be heading south to Texas after a viral video of their actions prompted them to flee.
“ATF is working in close coordination with both the FBI and U.S. Marshal Service in attempt to locate and apprehend these individuals,” the statement said. “We’re asking the public to be on the lookout for the couple along the Interstate 35 corridor. If you see them, contact ATF with their whereabouts.”
The I-35 corridor runs from the top of Minnesota all the way down to the southern Texas border. Officials with the ATF noted that Felan has multiple felony convictions, including burglary, aggravated assault, and drug offenses.
We also reported that when you click on the “Donate” button on blacklivesmatter.com you are sent to an “ActBlue” donations page. You can even read that the donations are being made to ActBlue Charities in the fine print.
ActBlue has several entities under the overarching name ActBlue. We noted however, that when you research the expenditures of the ActBlue PAC, all of their contributions are directly going to top DNC campaigns:
What kind of organization is “Black Lives Matter”? (Non-profit, private, etc…) Where is the headquarters? What’s the address & phone number?
Is it a registered non-profit in the US (501-c-3)? Is the organization the one at the IRS website https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ that is being donated to today? There is an entity labeled Black Lives Matter Foundation (EIN: 47-4143254). This entity last filed in 2017.
Where does ActBlue send the donations for BLM? We noted that Black Lives Matter leader Ashley Yates posted about the missing Black Lives Matter millions.
The fact that a leader of an organization is questioning where money being donated to that organization ends up, is a red flag – a really big red flag!
When was the last time you heard the leader of a Not-For=Profit (NFP) asking people NOT to donate to the organization? That is just unheard of (!) and can only mean one thing: the BLM leadership, itself, knows something is going on.
The Capital Research Center is a conservative organization which researches – specifically – NFPs and foundations for: corruption; connections between NFP boards; personnel; donor connections; etc. An article at Human Events in 2009 and quoted at the Capital Research Project explained the connections between George Soros and ActBlue:
In an era when the most vehement proponents of big government happen to be the most politically active billionaires, it is not surprising that the Democracy Alliance, a collaborative of liberal donors led by George Soros and Peter B. Lewis, has set out on an offensive to pile funds into the liberal machine.
The tactics of Soros, his constituent investors and foundations are revealed easily — and in considerable detail — by an examination of the seemingly “grassroots” groups that this very non-grassroots collection of billionaires and bureaucrats fund.
In fact, staples of the “grassroots” political movement — especially progressive websites such as MoveOn.org and ActBlue — are not driven by the average Democrat, as their image may suggest, but are rather mouthpieces for the radical agendas of the likes of Soros and labor unions. […]
Black Lives Matter began in 2013 with a Twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, called a “white Hispanic” in the press, was acquitted in the killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin. Radical-left activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi claim credit for the slogan and hashtag. Following the Michael Brown shooting in August 2014, Dream Defenders, an organization co-founded by (the ACORN-affiliated) Working Families Party activist and Occupy Wall Street organizer Nelini Stamp, popularized the phrase “Hands Up – Don’t Shoot!” which has since become BLM’s widely recognized slogan. Not surprisingly, former Communist Party USA vice presidential candidate Angela Davis sits on the Dream Defenders advisory board.
Garza, Cullors, and Tometi all work for front groups of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, one of the four largest radical Left organizations in the country. The others are the Communist Party USA, Democratic Socialists of America, and the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Stamp’s ACORN—now rebranded under a variety of different names after its official 2010 bankruptcy—works with all four organizations, and Dream Defenders is backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), ACLU, and Southern Poverty Law Center, among others.
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization is a hereditary descendant of the New Communist Movement inspired by Chinese dictator Mao Zedong and the many communist revolutions occurring throughout the world in the 1960s and ’70s. Freedom Road split into two separate groups in 1999, FRSO/Fight Back and FRSO/OSCL (Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino Para la Libertad). Black Lives Matter and its founders are allied with the latter. (Future references to “Freedom Road” in this article refer to FRSO/OSCL.)
Simpson goes on to tie Black Lives Matter to numerous socialist groups in the US. The term, ‘white privilege’ was launched by a communist according to Simpson who then concludes:
But do not be confused: “White” with an uppercase W does not mean white as most Americans use the word. “White” in radical parlance means anyone of any race, creed, nationality, color, sex, or sexual preference who embraces capitalism, free markets, limited government, and American traditional culture and values. These beliefs are deemed to be irredeemably evil, and anyone who aligns with them is “white” in spirit and thus equally guilty of “white crimes.” Ignatiev still teaches, now at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
The Black Lives Matter movement carries this narrative to unprecedented heights, claiming that only whites can be racists. (“The Result of Victimhood and Lies: Great Evil,” by Dennis Prager, National Review Online, Sept. 1, 2015.) And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers,” and leftist Democrats, intent on making blacks cannon fodder, the shock troops of the coming revolution.
Liberals have manipulated the Not-for-Profit (NFP) platform for years. Under Obama, conservatives were targeted when they asked for the NFP status after the origination of the Tea Party movement. What was missed at the time was that the Democrats had stepped into the Not-for-Profit game and corrupted it immensely.
Americans are donating to NFP’s believing they are who they say they are. However, the Democrat establishment has a more nefarious use of the NFP platform to accomplish their partisan goals. This is unknown to most donors.
The Black Lives Matter – ActBlue relationship appears to be an example of this and appears to be another huge Democrat scandal.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is running on a promise to bring the country together, but he is personally culpable in some of its worst divisions.
He continues to claim — falsely — that President Donald Trump supported neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when Trump actually said they should be “condemned totally.” It is only the latest case in which Biden sought to exploit racial division and other fault lines in American society to achieve political gain.
1. Biden voted to restore U.S. citizenship to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Biden voted to honor Confederate leaders who are now vilified by his party, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the New York Times as racists and traitors who must be expunged from history. He joined a unanimous Senate in voting for citizenship for Lee in 1975, and again in voting for citizenship for Davis in 1977 — the latter being sided into law by Democrat President Jimmy Carter.
2. Biden sided with segregationists. Early in his Senate career, Biden formed alliances with Southern politicians who had been segregationists. He also opposed of “busing,” the policy of forcibly desegregating schools. Though the policy was broadly unpopular, Biden’s opposition went further than many. In an interview in 1975 unearthed by the Washington Examiner, Biden said that busing would lead to “a totally homogeneous society,” hurting black and white people alike.
3. Biden made Supreme Court confirmations fights to the death. Prior to Biden becoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court confirmations were based almost entirely on qualifications; conservative Antonin Scalia was confirmed unanimously in 1986. But the next year, Biden presided over the confirmation hearings for Robert Bork, who was smeared for his conservative views, and rejected. Confirmations have been death matches ever since.
4. Biden’s votes against, and for, war with Iraq. Biden made the wrong call on Iraq — twice. In 1990, he voted against the Gulf War, after Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and presented a direct threat to U.S. allies in the region. In 2002, he voted for the Iraq War, which was originally justified based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. The first war united Americans; the second war divided Americans. Biden made the more divisive call in both cases.
5. Biden conducted the Anita Hill hearings. Biden presided over the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was nearly derailed by Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment. Biden managed to outrage both sides. Women were furious at the way Hill was treated by Biden and the male members of the committee (Biden now claims, falsely, that he believed Hill at the time.) Others were outraged at the vilification of an eminent black jurist.
6. Biden described Barack Obama in racist terms. Biden has a long history of racist language. One of the more notorious examples involved then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who ran against Biden in the 2008 presidential campaign (before inviting him to join the ticket). Biden described Obama in demeaning terms: “You got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
7. Biden supported the passage of Obamacare along party lines. The so-called “Affordable Care Act” — which turned out to be unaffordable for many — is the most divisive entitlement in the history of the United States. After it was pushed through Congress against bipartisan opposition, using a parliamentary mechanism in the Senate to evade a filibuster, Biden celebrated with Obama. Not realizing a microphone in the White House was live, he called it a “big fucking deal.”
8. Biden tried to scare black voters against voting for Mitt Romney. In the 2012 campaign, Biden told a largely-African American audience in Danville, Virginia, that the Republican ticket would “put y’all back in chains.” It was a striking remark that Biden later tried to pretend was a reference to middle-class families, not slavery: “The last time these guys unshackled the economy, to use their term, they put the middle class in shackles,” Biden claimed.
9. Biden launched his campaign with the Charlottesville “fine people hoax.” As noted above, Biden launched his campaign with the “fine people hoax,” the false claim that Trump called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville “very fine people.” (Trump actually said the “fine people” were non-violent protesters, left and right, over the removal of a Confederate statue.) Biden continues to use the claim during nationwide race riots, seemingly unconcerned about the consequences.
10. Biden claimed that black people could not vote for Trump. In an interview last month with popular radio host Charlemagne tha God, Biden claimed: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” He later tried to claim that Charlemagne had “baited” him into making that statement, but the host denied it — and indeed, video of the interview showed that Biden had brought up the claim independent of any actual question.
The only real claim Biden has to being any kind of unifying figure is the fact that he was chosen by Barack Obama to be his vice president. That, in turn, helped Biden build support in the black community that he had never had before.
Biden has also drawn on his experiences in handling personal grief in an effort to show empathy with the nation as a whole. Yet he has never reckoned with his own role in causing division and pain — not only in the past, but in the present as well.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
