Joe Biden can’t handle the high inflation that’s killing the working glass. He can’t handle the high gas prices either. There’s a supply chain crisis. He’s dragging us into another forever conflict in Ukraine. He thinks the US isn’t on the precipice of another recession when all the indicators point to a brutal year for the economy. No, it’s been a brutal economy ever since this good-for-nothing geriatric assumed his custodial role at the White House. There is not a single thing he’s been able to solve or make better for the American people. All he can do is sign worthless executive orders that he says are doing an excellent job of making this economic fallout from Russia worse. No, sir. It’s you. Your economic aides looked like grade-A idiots peddling the ‘it’s Russia’ talking point to explain why everyone is having their wallets torched.
Ok, let’s try something simple, like getting WNBA star Brittney Griner out of jail in Russia. One American is being locked up abroad. You can bust her out, right? No. No, he can’t. Griner has been behind bars in Russia for months for an alleged drug offense. She’s been detained since February 17. Supposedly, Russian authorities found vape cartridges with cannabis oil. It’s weak sauce, but she’s been over there—and Joe Biden really doesn’t care. He’s in Rehoboth, Delaware falling off bikes. An American is reportedly being wrongfully detained and he’s doing nothing. When Lavar Ball’s son was detained in China for an alleged shoplifting incident in 2017, Trump got him out. That is a fact. With Biden—not so much.
Griner’s wife has also gone nuclear on the Biden administration. On their anniversary, a call arranged between the two women never occurred because no one was on the other line at the US Embassy in Russia to connect the call. You cannot make this up (via ESPN) [emphasis mine]:
WNBA star Brittney Griner tried to call her wife nearly a dozen times through the U.S. Embassy in Russia on the couple's fourth anniversary Saturday, but they never connected since the phone line at the embassy was not staffed, Cherelle Griner said Monday.
The couple has not spoken by phone in the four months since Griner's arrest in Russia on drug-related charges. That was to have changed Saturday, when a long-awaited call was to have finally taken place. But the day came and went without any contact, leaving an anguished Cherelle Griner to wonder what went wrong and to suspect at least initially that Russian authorities had thwarted the call.
On Monday, she said she learned from her wife's lawyers a more distressing truth: Brittney Griner had actually tried to call 11 times over a period of several hours, dialing a number she'd been given at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which the couple had been told would then patch the call through to Cherelle Griner in Phoenix. But each time, the call went unanswered because the desk at the embassy where the phone rang was apparently unstaffed Saturday.
[…]
For Cherelle Griner, the experience has further exacerbated already simmering frustrations about the U.S. government's response to her wife's case. U.S. officials have repeatedly said they are working behind the scenes to get the two-time Olympian home from Russia and consider her case a top priority. But Cherelle Griner said she remains "very pissed" by Saturday's ordeal, especially since the call had been on the schedule for two weeks and yet no one warned her during that time that it might be logistically impossible because of the weekend.
She added: "I find it unacceptable and I have zero trust in our government right now. If I can't trust you to catch a Saturday call outside of business hours, how can I trust you to actually be negotiating on my wife's behalf to come home? Because that's a much bigger ask than to catch a Saturday call.''
Cherelle Griner said a contact in the U.S. government had apologized to her for the error. She said she has since learned that the one number Brittney Griner had been told to dial typically processes calls from prisoners on Mondays through Fridays but not weekends.
"But mind you," Cherelle Griner said in the interview, "this phone call had been scheduled for almost two weeks -- with a weekend date."
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I can see now how our exit from Afghanistan devolved into a shambolic mess. I can see how our State Department gets outmaneuvered and pushed around. Where’s Tony Blinken on this? Where’s anybody from this administration on this supposedly wrongful detention of an American citizen? You get our people out especially if it’s on some minor drug charge. She didn’t murder anyone. She wasn’t dealing drugs. This is Sesame Street stuff, and it shouldn’t be hard. Even things that could be easy wins for this government become a tortured process. It’s a tire fire. The simple things cannot be done with this crew. They couldn’t even manage a phone call that everyone knew was coming on a weekend week in advance. Griner remains detained until at least July 2.
Happy Juneteenth. What a mess.
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