Two significant but seemingly unrelated events occurred this week that were, in fact, fully intertwined, and both illuminate the hypocrisy of the country’s current leadership and its media cheerleaders.
First was the revelation by the FBI and the largest intelligence agency in our government on weapons of mass destruction that the Chinese virus originated from a bioweapons research facility in China, as many, including some liberals, long suspected. To date, this virus has killed over 1 million Americans and up to 9 million people worldwide, and the U.S government now confirms that it was cooked up in a Chinese lab and then either knowingly or unknowingly unleashed upon the world shortly thereafter, with zero warning and cover-your-tail actions by the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
The announcement by the FBI and the Department of Energy follows the government’s earlier admission that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under the leadership of Dr. Tony Fauci, funded research into the very pathogens that created the Chinese virus. To his credit, Senator Rand Paul earlier that year challenged Dr. Fauci on his provision of funding for that research and his attempts to cover it up.
As if on cue, the smoke engines of the mainstream media revved into overdrive to refute those claims that are now confirmed by the highest levels of our government. At the same time, the media continued fawning over Fauci, including celebrating him on magazine covers and yard signs blanketing liberal neighborhoods from San Francisco to Martha’s Vineyard, declaring “I believe the Science” and “Thank you, Dr. Fauci!” Fauci summed up his newfound celebrity by telling CBS’s Norah O'Donnell, “With all due modesty, I think I'm pretty effective.” This is the same man who scolded the country to mask up, lockdown, and get the jab -- none of which prevent infection by the virus.
The second development of the past week along these lines was the visit by two of Joe Biden’s cabinet officials, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Attorney General Merrick Garland, to Ukraine, where they pledged to pump billions more in U.S. taxpayer funding into the coffers of the commando-vested leader of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. This comes on top of roughly $120 billion in U.S. contributions to his war chest to date. Yellen even toasted the outsized outlays by ordinary Americans for this regional European conflict, telling the celebrity-obsessed leader, “the U.S. is proud to be Ukraine’s largest bilateral donor.”
Their visits follow Biden himself swooping into Kiev on Air Force One with his cash suitcase to kiss the Ukrainian leader's ring, building on his family’s long and lucrative relationship with that country’s leadership. Indeed, as Obama’s vice president, Biden spent his final week in office flying at taxpayers’ expense to the corrupt Eastern European country in his sixth visit there on Air Force Two. No word on whether any of those visits included fake air raid sirens, despite Putin’s invasion of Crimea on his watch nine years ago this week.
Predictably, Biden’s expedition drew hosannas in the highest from the liberal media, including tick-tocks on the secret planning for the trip and gushing praise from almost every mainstream outlet. The Atlantic ran a piece calling Biden’s jaunt “a gut punch to the Russian leader” and crooned, “the visual contrast between an American president with his signature aviator sunglasses walking in sunny downtown Kyiv with the pugnacious and eloquent president of Ukraine and a Russian president who has yet to visit the war zone is also striking.”
There’s one small problem with this praise – the simple fact that Biden’s own weakness on the world stage early in his term – particularly in Afghanistan and towards China – encouraged Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in the first place, in the eyes of many. In this way, Biden’s triumphant parade with Zelensky in Kyiv’s central square seems not only bizarre, but more than a little self-serving. It’s almost as if he’s taking credit for demanding that taxpayers fund a hundred-plus-billion-dollar response to a calamity of his own making, with the media clapping along in unison. Er…paging Dr. Fauci, anyone?
This week’s developments on COVID and Ukraine may have served the American people well by reinforcing for them the longstanding sanctimony and posturing of Biden and Fauci, along with their allies in the media, on two of the most consequential issues in recent decades. Unfortunately, Americans have paid an enormous price for their actions, and given this administration's track record to date, neither of the two – and certainly no one in the media – will accept responsibility or hold themselves accountable.
John Ullyot is a U.S. Marine veteran and served as National Security Council spokesman and Assistant Secretary for Veterans Affairs under President Trump.
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