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Joe Biden Met with Hunter’s Business Associates More Times Than with His Cabinet


By: M.D. Kittle | December 20, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/20/joe-biden-met-with-hunters-business-associates-more-times-than-with-his-cabinet/

President Joe Biden holds a rare cabinet meeting.
The WSJ reports Biden met infrequently with his cabinet, while emails show he interacted ‘countless’ times with his degenerate son’s clients.

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They say the U.S. presidency is the loneliest job in the world. Maybe the second-loneliest gig is that of Cabinet secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration. 

piece published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal pulls from dozens of sources who say Biden’s inner circle of trusted aides increasingly kept contact with the president at a minimum, including the people he should have depended on most to consult and advise for the good of the nation. 

The president who has spent a good chunk of his term out of the office apparently was not all that keen on meetings with his Cabinet secretaries. In fact, Biden may have met more often with his criminal son’s sketchy clients than he has with his administration’s top managers.

‘Hide the President’s True Condition’

Joe Biden was such a political liability that his handlers hid him away during the 2020 presidential campaign. The man campaigned from his Delaware basement through the brunt of the election year. The cloistered strategy wasn’t as much about protecting the feeble geezer from Covid as it was designed to prevent American voters from seeing what a physical and mental mess Biden really was. 

Even the Pravda Press, which was openly rooting for — and covering for — the Democrat gaffe machine, was forced to report on Biden’s bunker campaign. 

“Over the past six weeks, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been running his campaign from his Delaware basement,” CBS News reported in April of 2020, showcasing a fluff piece from The New York Times about how team Biden was attempting to “keep his campaign relevant during the pandemic.”

The occasional programmed Zoom calls notwithstanding, keeping Biden “relevant” (or electable), meant keeping him hidden — literally underground. 

That limited contact strategy has defined the octogenarian’s presidential tenure. Biden has held the fewest number of press conferences and media interviews of any president since Ronald Reagan’s first term, and it isn’t close, Axios reported in late June. The publication at the time noted that Biden was about to sit for a rare interview with ABC News” …  “amid growing concern about his age and acuity — and accusations that his inner circle has taken pains to hide the president’s true condition from public view.” 

Quaintly, back then Axios and its corporate media bedfellows were still trying to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes, that there were “two Bidens”: the 81-year-old who had recently froze up like so much freezer peas in his debate with former President Donald Trump, and the virile campaigning Joe. 

‘Wouldn’t be Welcome’

It turns out, Biden wasn’t just hiding from voters. He was ducking his own Cabinet. 

 “Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said,” reports The Wall Street Journal in a piece headlined, How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge.”

The story further noted that “cabinet members — including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen — were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”

Like other aging, cognitively diminished seniors, Biden had his “good days, and bad days,” one former aide told the publication. The president has routinely gotten a pass from fellow Democrats and corporate media on his memory lapses, mumbled and jumbled answers to questions, and outright lies. Remember, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report detailing Biden’s possession and mishandling of classified documents recommended the president not be prosecuted because a jury might well see him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”

Meeting with the ‘Big Guy’

But as The Federalist has reported, said “well-meaning elderly man” is alleged to have interacted with Hunter Biden’s suspect clients “countless times.” Devon Archer, the younger Biden’s former business associate, testified before a congressional committee last year that Hunter put his father, vice president at the time, on speakerphone nearly two dozen times while talking to overseas business contacts. Archer discussed Hunter’s involvement on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings and the hefty checks it wrote to a guy seemingly unqualified for the job. Archer and others have alleged Burisma and other “clients” were paying for the Biden “brand.” Aka, access to the vice president.

“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” the New York Post reported, quoting from a readout from panel Republicans.

“Archer talked about the ‘big guy’ and how Hunter Biden always said, ‘We need to talk to my guy,’ ‘We need to see when my guy is going to be here,’ and those types of things,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told reporters as he left the deposition in July 2023. 

There were many more interactions between Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s other business associates, according to the laptop that the Deep State and the accomplice media long claimed did not exist. As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported:  

Biden reportedly met with Ukrainian, Russian, and Kazakhstani business partners at a famous D.C. establishment in 2015. The meeting, arranged by Hunter, took place at one of Georgetown’s most famous restaurants, Café Milano… Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, thanked Hunter for the introduction to his father.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote in an email released by the New York Post weeks before the 2020 election.

And visitor logs show Hunter Biden’s business pals paid a call on the White House at least 80 times while Biden was VP, Fox News reported. A meeting with the elder Biden at the time involved Chinese businessmen tied to a firm that Hunter Biden had invested in. 

Earlier this month, the president issued a sweeping, unprecedented pardon of his multi-felon son, not merely for the serious crimes for which he was found guilty but for crimes that he may have committed during his salad days with Burisma and the other business associates seeking access to the “Big Guy.” 

The Disaster of Absence 

As president, Biden has held just nine full Cabinet meetings, the Wall Street Journal reported. The numbers include three such sessions in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and only one this year. By comparison, President Barack Obama led 19 Cabinet meetings and President Donald Trump called 25 in their first terms, the Journal noted, using data obtained by former CBS News reporter Mark Knoller.

While White House officials have disputed Biden’s distance and decline, the cloistering of the cognitively slipping president appears to have contributed to some disastrous consequences. 

Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who chaired the House Armed Services Committee in 2021, told the Wall Street Journal that he was shut out of conversations with the president leading up to the administration’s debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

“I was begging them to set expectations low,” Smith, who had misgivings about how the operation would go, told the publication. 

The Journal reported that “[f]ormer administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.” Many of us have often been left wondering if the president has had a pulse at all. 

Witness accounts and his degenerate son’s own emails suggest Biden had plenty of vim and vigor when it was time to talk about corrupt financial deals. It was the business of protecting and leading America that he seemed disinterested in during his historically awful presidential term. 


Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

US Reaffirms ‘Ironclad’ Support as Israel Braces for Iran Attack


By Jewish News Syndicate Staff    |   Friday, 12 April 2024 10:55 AM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/u-s-israel-support/2024/04/12/id/1160745/

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated on Thursday Washington’s commitment to upholding Israel’s security, as the IDF continued preparations for an expected Iranian attack on the home front. Austin spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “to reiterate ironclad U.S. support for Israel’s defense in the face of growing threats from Iran and its regional proxies,” according to a Pentagon readout of their call.

“Echoing President [Joe] Biden’s unequivocal message to Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, Secretary Austin assured Minister Gallant that Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against Iranian attacks, which Tehran has publicly threatened,” added the statement.

On Wednesday, Biden said his administration was committed to backing Israel amid reports of an imminent Iranian attack.

“As I told Prime Minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad,” said Biden.

“Let me say it again, ironclad. We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security,” he added.

Washington and its allies believe a major attack on Israel by Iran has become a matter of when, not if, following the killing of an Iranian general in Syria on April 1, which Tehran blamed on the Jewish state.

Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the attack in Damascus which killed Brig. Gen. Mohammad Zahedi, but four officials told The New York Times last week that Jerusalem ordered the strike.

On Thursday, Austin and Gallant “discussed readiness for an Iranian attack against the State of Israel, which could lead to regional escalation… [and] require an appropriate Israeli response,” according to an Israeli readout.

Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East, arrived in Israel on Thursday to coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces regarding a possible attack.

Jerusalem is preparing for a strike in the next 24 to 48 hours, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing U.S. intelligence.

The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem announced on Thursday that “out of an abundance of caution,” government employees and their family members can only travel for personal reasons in the greater Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Beersheva areas “until further notice.”

On Thursday evening, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that Israel was “highly prepared for various scenarios, and we are constantly assessing the situation. We are ready on offense and defense using various capabilities, and also with our strategic partners,” he added.

The Israel Defense Forces has been placed on high alert, resulting in combat soldiers’ weekend leaves being canceled, and the military calling up additional reserve soldiers to the IDF Aerial Defense Array.

Netanyahu said on Thursday that the Jewish state would respond in kind to any attack.

Speaking during a visit to the Tel Nof Air Base, he said, “We are in challenging times. We are in the midst of the war in Gaza, which is continuing at full force, even as we are continuing our relentless efforts to return our hostages.”

However, he continued, “We are also prepared for scenarios involving challenges in other sectors. We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”

Read more: US Reaffirms ‘Ironclad’ Support as Israel Braces for Iran Attack | Newsmax.com

Lloyd Austin: No Evidence Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza


By Charlie McCarthy    |   Tuesday, 09 April 2024 12:07 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/us/defense-secretary-lloyd-austin/2024/04/09/id/1160314/

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday there was no evidence Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the Hamas war in Gaza. Austin, appearing with Defense Comptroller Mike McCord and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. CQ Brown, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss the president’s 2025 budget request for the Pentagon.

Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted Austin several times while the secretary was reading his opening statement. During questioning, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Austin whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“We don’t have any evidence of genocide being [committed],” said Austin, before Cotton repeated his question.

“We don’t have evidence of that to my knowledge,” Austin replied.

Cotton commended Austin for his answer, saying he was “better than [CIA] Director [William] Burns and [National Intelligence] Director [Avril] Haines did … last month at the Intelligence Committee when they dodged that question.”

Cotton then said Austin has been accused of “greenlighting genocide” and asked the secretary whether he wanted to respond to such accusations.

“What I would say, Sen. Cotton, from the very beginning, we committed to help assist Israel in defending its territory and its people by providing security assistance,” Austin said, “and I would remind everybody that what happened on Oct. 7 was absolutely horrible.

“Numbers of Israeli citizens killed, and then a couple of hundred Israeli citizens taken hostage … American citizens as well.”

“So you deny the accusation that you greenlit genocide,” Cotton asked.

“I absolutely deny it,” Austin said.

The Senate hearing was the first-time lawmakers on both sides were able to question the Pentagon’s top civilian and military leadership on the administration’s Israel strategy following Tel Aviv’s deadly strike on World Central Kitchen humanitarian aid workers in Gaza.

The World Central Kitchen strike led to a shift in tone from President Joe Biden on how Israel must protect civilian life in Gaza and drove dozens of House Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to call on Biden to halt weapons transfers to Israel.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Charlie McCarthy 

Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.

It’s Joe Biden, Not Tommy Tuberville, Who Brought The ‘Culture War’ To The Military


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JULY 17, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/17/its-joe-biden-not-tommy-tuberville-who-brought-the-culture-war-to-the-military/

Tommy Tuberville and Joe Biden

Since February, Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville has been using a “senatorial hold” to block personnel moves by the U.S. military that require Senate confirmation. The media and Democrats are very upset that Tuberville is “waging an unprecedented campaign” and embroiling our vital national defense policy in the culture war.

Joe Biden claims that Republicans are “injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues is bizarre,” which is “totally irresponsible.” While I don’t know much about Tommy Tuberville, the president has it backward. It was Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, not any Republican, who broke with 45 years of policy last year by instituting effective reimbursements for elective abortions by military and dependents. It is just as true to say, probably truer, that the president is the one holding up military promotions by unilaterally trashing policy that has been in place since 1980.

One of the implications of most stories covering the military hold debate illustrates the radically rightward shift and unprecedented fanaticism of Republican politics. This, too, is backward. Biden, who supported the Hyde Amendment, a law banning federal funds to pay for abortion, from 1976-2019, is an exemplar of the hard-left cultural lurch of the modern left. Biden had not merely gone along with the Hyde Amendment as a means of compromising with Republicans back in the ’80s and ’90s. Until the past couple of decades, the abortion debate wasn’t neatly divided by party, and Biden, purportedly a devout Catholic, had to keep conservative working-class Delawarean voters happy. In 1994, the future president wrote a letter to a constituent bragging that he had voted against abortion funding on 50 occasions.

Like most things Biden says, this was probably untrue. But he did vote to save the Hyde Amendment repeatedly over the decades. Biden also voted against allowing Medicaid to fund abortions, even for victims of rape and incest. He supported a Jesse Helms amendment that would have prohibited using federal funds for abortions and abortion research or training. Biden voted numerous times to prohibit the Federal Employees Health Benefits program from funding abortions for government workers.

Indeed, Biden was constantly “injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues.” He didn’t merely support banning public funding for abortion in the United States; he wrote an amendment to Foreign Assistance Act — for years, referred to as the “Biden amendment” — that barred U.S. foreign aid from being used in any research related to abortions. In 1984, Biden supported the “Mexico City policy,” banning federal funding for private organizations that provide abortion, advocate to decriminalize abortion, or expand abortion services.

Even on June 5, 2019, not long after his 2020 presidential campaign kickoff, Biden publicly reaffirmed his support for the Hyde Amendment. The very next day, after some criticism from primary opponents, the spineless candidate changed his position and “denounce[d]” the Hyde Amendment. For what it’s worth, virtually every poll on the question of public funding for abortion, even ones that offer a misleading framing of the issue, find most Americans support banning taxpayer funding for abortions. Poll support doesn’t mean much in my book, but it does put to rest the idea that Tuberville is taking on some kind of fanatical position outside the mainstream.

Then again, today, Biden, the man who twice voted for partial-birth abortion bans and once supported overturning Roe v. Wade, backs state-funded abortions on demand from conception to crowning for any reason, including eugenics and sex-selective abortion. And, for the first time in history, he wants to implement that policy in the military. Bizarre, indeed.


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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I Don’t Know What’s Going on With These UFOs, But I Know We Won’t Get the Truth


BY: JORDAN BOYD | FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/15/i-dont-know-whats-going-on-with-these-ufos-but-i-know-we-wont-get-the-truth/

antony Blinken, Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin
Even if the Pentagon and Biden administration release information about these objects, will Americans believe it?

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Mere days after an F-22 fighter jet downed a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, three unidentified flying objects were shot down over Alaska, Canada, and Michigan in just three days. The Biden administration pledged from day one to “bring transparency and truth back to government” but is eerily silent about what the objects were and why they were shot down.

Not only has President Joe Biden gone days without saying anything about the downed objects, but the Pentagon also refused to give clear answers to reporters or the public about the unusual activity in the sky. U.S. officials say they don’t know what the objects, which clock in at the size of a small car, are. They claim they don’t know what the objects are capable of nor do they know who sent them. They don’t even know how to hit some of them with a $400,000 missile on the first try.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of both U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), went so far as to say the U.S. hasn’t “ruled out anything” including an extraterrestrial threat, a claim the White House rejected on Monday.

That’s a bizarre statement that certainly does not instill confidence in Americans that our financially bloated Department of Defense can properly assess and neutralize threats to U.S. national security. That also means any reassurance from the Pentagon that “these objects don’t present a military threat to anyone on the ground,” as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday, is pure speculation. As is the White House’s claim that these “could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose.” If the Pentagon does actually know what’s going on, then the DOD is clearly stonewalling any attempts to inform the public.

Democrats, Republicans, and corporate media alike are frustrated with the Biden administration’s lack of communication. Even after a classified briefing about the objects Tuesday, some senators say the Pentagon is deliberately keeping information from Americans.

“99% of what was discussed in that room today can be made public without compromising security in this country,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told Fox News.

If that’s the case, why aren’t Americans getting answers?

Rewind One Week

If the way the Biden administration handled the Chinese spy balloon at the beginning of the month means anything, we won’t get clear answers about these mysterious aircraft for a while — if at all.

It was a day after a big white object was spotted in Montana that reports indicated the Pentagon had “been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days.” If the balloon hadn’t been spotted by the public, there’s a good chance the DOD would not have told Americans about it.

Through The New York Times, an anonymous “official” at the Pentagon once again claimed without evidence that “the balloon did not pose a military or physical threat” to Americans.

When the Defense Department finally announced it downed the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, an unnamed official at the DOD allegedly told reporters at an off-camera press briefing on Feb. 4 that Chinese balloons like this one “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration.” This unsourced claim spread like wildfire through the corporate media even though multiple Trump-era officials went on the record to deny it. It wasn’t until two days after the Pentagon’s initial accusation that VanHerck “clarified” that “we did not detect those threats” at the time Trump was in office. So, the DOD knew Trump couldn’t be blamed for failing to shoot balloons he was never informed about but let lies about the former administration spread among the public without consequence or pushback.

A Pentagon that prioritizes its political agenda ahead of the security of the American people it is sworn to protect clearly doesn’t have its priorities straight. Why should we believe anything they say about the series of UFOs?

Even if the Pentagon finally decides to release information about these last three objects, who sent them, and why they were hovering over North America, will Americans even believe it? Trust in the U.S. military is falling and currently sits under 50 percent. It has broken the trust of Americans, and that won’t be helped by further obscuring information.

I’m not going to pretend to know what’s going on with the downed UFOs. What I do know is the Pentagon and the Biden administration both have long histories of lying to Americans to protect their political agendas.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Buck Stops Where?

A.F. BRANCO on October 1, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-buck-stops-where/

Biden, Milley, and Austin pointing fingers, blaming each other for the Afghanistan disaster.

Milley, Biden, Austin blame Game
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.

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