Nobody calls Joe Biden names and gets away with it.
That includes British lawmakers angry over the poorly planned pull-out of U.S. troops and personnel from Afghanistan, which led to a Taliban victory after 20 years of war.
The latest from the Biden White House is that he just might end the “special relationship” with Britain. Some cheeky fellows on the Sceptr’d Isle are calling him names.
Meanwhile, some Americans — the mourning families of the Marines killed in last week’s suicide bombing at the airport in Kabul — aren’t too happy with the Sleepy One, either. Biden flubbed a meeting with the families by looking at his watch and talking about his late son, Beau.
Biden Holds Grudges
President Touch and Sniff holds grudges, London’s Telegraph reported. Biden “‘will remember’”comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the U.K., and will ‘bear a grudge’ against Britain,” the newspaper reported, citing White House sources.
Actually, given Biden’s declining mental capacity, he might not remember the comments and instead remember his days as a truck driver, but in any case, the trouble with Britain began when top officials committed the crime of noticing.
They said Biden “looked gaga” and called him “doolally” after Kabul collapsed.
“Doolally” means “crazy,” the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary says, as in “Uncle Oliver has gone doolally again. Someone get his lithium!” In this case, of course, it would be Uncle Joe. U.S. officials warn that Biden might lash out, like an angry old man shouting at the clouds:
“The Brits have their view. But they should be careful. What’s been said is offensive and he will remember it. He actually has a long memory,” a US source told the Telegraph.
“It’s always been his way that if somebody says something really bad to him, or about him, he doesn’t speak to them again. He does bear grudges. Boris Johnson should know that.”
Still, the source told the Telegraph, “The president is not ‘gaga.’ He’s actually picked up his game quite a bit since the campaign.”
Americans can only wonder what his “game” would be like if he hadn’t picked it up. And name-calling was just one mistake the British made. Johnson called the pull-out a mistake and wanted Biden to delay it:
A White House insider said the criticism from Britain had been noted, and would not be forgotten quickly.
He said: “Quite frankly, it bodes poorly for the relationship with the UK. The special relationship is very much in danger at this point.
“The president will say publicly that everything is fine, that our ties have never been stronger, but behind the scenes we are at a very dangerous moment. For him, it’s my way or the highway.”
He added: “It’s incumbent on [Boris] Johnson to come to the defence of the special relationship.
“When you have individual MPs talking like this it’s harmful, but when the Prime Minister says something it reverberates around the halls of power in Washington.
“Johnson needs to take dramatic action to secure the relationship.”
Families Miffed
Bad as that look is for Biden, what happened to him when he met the families of fallen Marines is worse.
When Biden approached Mike Schmitz and his ex-wife at Dover Air Force Base, he didn’t ask about 20-year Jared Schmitz, who died in Kabul last week, the Washington Post reported. Biden focused on losing his own son.
Schmitz didn’t want to meet Biden, but changed his mind overnight. “By his own account, Schmitz glared hard at the president, so Biden spent more time looking at his ex-wife, repeatedly invoking his own son, Beau, who died six years ago, the Post reported:
Schmitz did not want to hear about Beau, he wanted to talk about Jared. Eventually, the parents took out a photo to show to Biden. “I said, ‘Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12,’” Schmitz said. “ ‘And take some time to learn their stories.’”
Biden did not seem to like that, Schmitz recalled, and he bristled, offering a blunt response: “I do know their stories.”
Schmitz agreed with Biden’s decision to pull out the troops, but thinks the aged president blew the operation, the Post reported.
Beyond that, though, Biden shouldn’t have spent so much time talking about his son, who died of brain cancer but served as a lawyer in Iraq, Schmitz told the newspaper:
I think it was all him trying to say he understands grief. But when you’re the one responsible for ultimately the way things went down, you kind of feel like that person should own it a little bit more. Our son is now gone. Because of a direct decision or game plan — or lack thereof — that he put in place.
The grieving relative of another Marine complained that Biden “kept checking his watch and bringing up Beau.”
