Joe Biden hasn’t exactly lived up to his promise to bring “honor and decency to the White House.”
The most recent embarrassment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was, of course, the cocaine scandal that came to an anti-climactic resolution earlier this month when the Secret Service announced that they were “not able” to “single out a person of interest” due to lack of evidence.
But that explanation only added to the humiliation for Joe Biden – after all, what kind of White House is he running when someone can sneak an illegal narcotic in and not get caught? The incident also raised a number of uncomfortable questions for the president given that his son Hunter is a known drug addict.
Last month, Hunter was the subject of another awkward White House episode when the scandal-ridden First Son was spotted at a state dinner held in honor of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland was also in attendance – just hours after new evidence emerged of an alleged coverup by Garland’s Justice Department in the criminal investigation into Hunter, and two days after the DOJ reached a plea agreement with the younger Biden over tax fraud and gun charges.
Conservative podcaster Michael Duncan compared the incident to “Bill Clinton bringing Monica Lewinsky to a family dinner,” while even some Democrats raised eyebrows at the decision to invite Hunter.
Outside of the First Family, Joe Biden’s other invited guests have similarly disgraced the grounds where Thomas Jefferson and Meriweather Lewis once planned a bold expedition into the new Louisiana Territory, where Union soldiers sat watch over President Lincoln during the Civil War, and where Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in the days after Pearl Harbor to coordinate the Allied war effort.
Now, it’s quite a different crowd strolling the South Lawn. During a “pride” event last month, for instance, transgender activist Rose Montoya filmed a video topless in front of the Truman Balcony.
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The clip of the bare-breasted 27-year-old quickly went viral on social media, drawing backlash from Republicans and Democrats alike. Eventually, even Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was forced to condemn Montoya’s actions – admitting that the incident was indeed unbecoming of a White House event.
While Montoya grabbed most of the headlines from that event, several veterans groups also took issue with the decision to display a giant “pride progress” flag in between two American flags on the White House’s South Portico. As the groups pointed out, according to the U.S. Flag Code, Old Glory “should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags of States or localities or pennants of societies are grouped and displayed.”
Undoubtedly the most obnoxious example of the Biden administration’s debasement of the White House has been the flood of social media influencers to the executive mansion. Over the past two years, Biden has recruited stars from platforms like Twitch and TikTok to help spread his message on everything from the COVID-19 vaccine to the Ukraine war.
In one particularly cringe-worthy example from August of 2021, a TikTok influencer who goes by the name “Benny Drama” uploaded a video shot at the White House featuring then-press secretary Jen Psaki. In the clip, Drama adopts the character of “Kooper the Gen Z Intern,” who prances around the West Wing in a white skirt and fake acrylic nails, referring to Psaki as “Jenny.” At one point, Drama runs down a hallway screaming, “We did it, Joe!”
Then there is Joe Biden himself. For the soon-to-be 81-year-old president who is in a clear state of cognitive decline, the embarrassing White House moments are equal parts sad, amusing, and terrifying.
During Biden’s first Easter Egg Roll in April of 2022, for example, a staffer dressed as the Easter Bunny intervened to prevent Biden from answering a reporter’s question on Afghanistan. The best answer we ever got for as to why Biden wasn’t able to comment on an important foreign policy issue is that he was needed to start another round of the egg-rolling competition.
And of course, there are the many, many, many gaffes, stumbles, and incidents of the president aimlessly wandering about – too many to begin to mention in detail here – as he bumbles his way around the few White House events he actually attends.
Just over halfway through his first term, it seems safe to say that Joe Biden has disgraced the White House more than any of its 43 previous occupants.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.
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