Biden, Trump, Hobbs . . . Three Politicians Who Need To Learn A Lot About Their Inadequacies
By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Amid all the reporting of Joe Biden negotiating on the debt ceiling, how curious were his protective media about just how much he actually could handle?
If you were to see a man who barely can climb a four-foot ladder and then were told that he scampered up the exterior of the Eiffel Tower in two minutes yesterday — not 60 years ago — would your skepticism be a reliable guide?
In an interview that had aired on May 5, Biden bragged to MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle that because of his D.C. tenure, he knew “more than the vast majority of people. And I’m more experienced than anybody that’s ever run for the [presidential] office.”
Think of that. Often-confused Biden proclaims on national television that he knows “more than the vast majority of people.” Is that why he thinks he’s entitled to rule over everyone else now and for years longer, even though he’s actively destroying the United States? What brains. What power.
Maybe Biden could play King Kong, the huge movie gorilla who climbed the Empire State Building in 1933 with a damsel in hand. Hmm, a mighty force, 90 years old, a damsel in hand. Would this be a role especially appealing to daydreaming Joe?
Even if a limping, elderly rodeo champion boasted about how much wild bull he’d done, that demonstrates nothing about his physical ability today. And it’d be more than fair to say that due to his clearly diminished cognition, even if Biden once could recite the entire encyclopedia from memory, he had forgotten about 98 percent of the pages by now.
In the debt negotiations, Biden’s incompetence was shielded by dominant media from necessary inspection again, even though he should be removed from the White House not only for his own safety, but also the nation’s — and the world’s. Think Ukraine. Think cunning Communist China.
How different from when the White House had been a cascade of leaks against the president. But that was back when the prez was outsider Republican Donald Trump, not cozy establishment Dem puppet Biden.
Meanwhile, two other political figures raised more questions about their capability. One is Biden’s incompetent equivalent as the newbie Dem governor of Arizona, the pro-abortion, left-wing radical Katie Hobbs.
The other, who needs no introduction, is Trump.
Hobbs’ unsteady command of the Arizona Capitol took another blow May 25 when her chief of staff and longtime pal, Allie Bones, resigned effective immediately with no explanation aside from boilerplate that she’d be seeking other opportunities.
Bones, who said in a February interview that she met Hobbs more than 20 years ago, had served as Arizona assistant secretary of state during the four years that Hobbs was secretary of state, then immediately went with Hobbs into the governor’s suite in January.
In a November 21, 2022, tweet that had a photo of them together, Hobbs said, “Together, I’m confident we will get the job done for Arizona.”
In a February 3 interview with the “Arizona Agenda” column at Substack.com, Bones noted they both were social workers, not business people.
Bones said: “I think we both look at social work as a means of evaluating and solving problems, like figuring out what is happening where there is a challenge and what we need to do to address that challenge. . . . We want to look at these things from a holistic perspective and figure out how we are making sure that everybody is getting their needs met.”
Hmm, a state run by two Democrat Party social workers who want to get people’s “needs met”? Sounds pretty risky?
A story posted May 25 at the Hobbs-friendly Arizona Republic dominant newspaper said the $205,000-a-year Bones “is the fourth of Hobbs’ top advisers to leave the administration within the first six months, adding to instability at the highest level of government.”
In less than six months in office and while this session of the legislature continued, the erratic Hobbs vetoed more bills than any other Arizona governor ever had, no matter how many years of holding that job. As of May 26, the liberal AZ Mirror site said she inked 99 vetoes. The nixes offended both foes and friends, as if Hobbs couldn’t help herself.
Asked by this writer about the kind of boss Hobbs is, conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard replied on May 26: “No idea if Hobbs is difficult to work for, but I think there are legitimate questions about who is really in charge on the Ninth Floor (the governor’s office), and I think the bodies we see piling up are just casualties in the ‘Game of Thrones’-style battle for control up there.”
Hobbs, a teacher-union servant, embroiled herself in another controversy by trying to yank away money for Education Savings Accounts for kindergartners that her predecessor, term-limited GOP Gov. Doug Ducey, had arranged.
Arizona State Treasurer Kimberly Yee, a conservative Republican, quickly called Hobbs to account. In a May 25 statement, Yee said, “Gov. Hobbs has just denied thousands of Arizona kids access to kindergarten through this politically driven and belligerent decision” while not informing Yee’s office of what was being planned financially until Hobbs issued a press release about it.
Treasurer Yee added: “It is clear Gov. Hobbs does not care about what is best for Arizona kids or respect the rights of parents to determine the best environment to educate their child. Instead, she is using these children as pawns in a desperate and transparent attempt to win back support from union bosses and her ultra-progressive base.
“Educational choice is the civil-rights issue of our time, and unfortunately Gov. Hobbs thinks she knows better than parents,” Yee said. “I fundamentally disagree, and so do Arizona families.”
On the national scene, Trump stepped straight into the kind of mess on May 30 that his personality sometimes seems unable to avoid. He harshly tweeted against his loyal, talented former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she misstated how large an opinion poll showed his support to be.
Tweeted Trump: “Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ [sic] McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on Fox News. I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up. While 25 is great, it’s not 34. She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll. The RINOS & Globalists can have her. Fox News should only use REAL Stars!!!”
So McEnany suddenly no longer not only wasn’t a real star but was tarred with an insulting appellation and consigned to be dumped with globalists and RINOs. You might think McEnany had leaked secrets about Trump’s private investments rather than having said his big lead in a poll was smaller than the reality.
On May 31 the hosts of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton national conservative radio talk program said they were receiving lots of negative reaction to Trump over this. They went on to ask that if loyalty is such a value to Trump, where was his to McEnany? And that if he should win the presidency again, how likely were top-level prospects to want to work for his administration?
A One-Way Street
One caller to the program said that for Trump, it’s just all about Trump.
Conservative GOP consultant Querard told The Wanderer on May 31, “Loyalty has always been a one-way street with Trump, but that’s hardly new or news anymore.”
Querard supports Ron DeSantis for president in 2024 after having supported Trump in 2016 after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) dropped out of that presidential-primary race.
Trump has been warned repeatedly about his negative style turning away voters, but he can’t seem to hold to that good advice.
If Trump had all the friends he deserved after a largely successful conservative term in the White House, there wouldn’t be a major candidate like DeSantis opposing him now. It would make more sense for Trump to boast nonstop of his own record rather than launch the daily petty, nasty email blasts against DeSantis that he does, starting with his nonsense renaming of the Florida governor as “DeSantimonious.”
During just two hours of the afternoon of May 30, my email inbox received four separate blasts from Trump whose subject lines attacked DeSantis as a failure, a fraud, a liar, and a plagiarizer.
One might think of Trump as Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple to crush the conservative political careers of both DeSantis and himself.
Among numerous critics of the attack on McEnany, pundit Karen Townsend posted at the Hot Air blog on May 31 that Trump “hired her as his press secretary in the White House. She was one of the best hires he made. For a man who liked to brag about only hiring the best people, he sure brought some real stinkaroos into the White House with him. Kayleigh was a jewel.”
Townsend added later: “Trump conflates name-calling and other bullying behavior with strength. He thinks it is manly behavior. It makes him look weak.”
As for Katie Hobbs’ future: On May 26 usually liberal Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts, taking note of Hobbs’ failures, said that her next chief of staff, instead of being another social worker, should be “an experienced shark. Someone at the top of the political food chain who can run interference as you make your way through what will be three and a half more years of always-roiling waters.”
Roberts even had a name in mind: Former Arizona Senate Minority Leader Chad Campbell.
Lo and behold, Hobbs selected Democrat Campbell after, um, the newspaper columnist selected Campbell for her. Which, of course, pleased columnist Roberts, who posted her happiness on May 31 under the headline, “Chad Campbell can turn Katie Hobbs into a governor.”
Because, um, Hobbs couldn’t do that for herself? Even though Maricopa County’s political corruptocrats had handed Hobbs the gubernatorial election.
Roberts proceeded to lay out her liberal wish list after commenting: “Expect to see him get to work immediately on a plan for what Hobbs can achieve next year — as opposed to her focus thus far, which primarily has been on what she can prevent via her well-used veto stamp.”
This selection, Roberts concluded, showed Hobbs can learn from her mistakes.
Which actually may be hoping for too much unless Hobbs, like Biden, simply is run by other people.
On May 31 the AZ Mirror posted a written statement by Campbell in which he boldly falsified from the start that Hobbs has been “such an effective governor, and that’s the approach the administration will continue to bring to all we do.”
The AZ Mirror said, however, that Campbell “did not return a request for comment.” Would he have gagged on his own words if he attempted more of this hokum in a single day?
On May 30 the Arizona Sun Times website posted an article noting one of Hobbs’ recent vetoes of a bill with bipartisan support. It was headlined, “Gov. Katie Hobbs Vetoes Bipartisan ATV Bill that Would Have Paved the Way for More Electric Vehicle Use in Arizona.”
The headline referred to all-terrain vehicles that would have been covered in the bill sponsored by Republican State Sen. Frank Carroll, who lamented in a statement: “This bill would have promoted small businesses in Arizona and supported electric alternatives to gas-powered OHVs [off-highway vehicles], which would have helped reduce exhaust and noise emissions.”
Finally, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson rejected Maricopa County’s attempts to have 2022 GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and her attorneys severely punished for pursuing her case that proper voting procedures weren’t followed when she was declared a narrow loser to Hobbs.
After a three-day trial, Thompson ruled on May 22 that Lake’s team didn’t present sufficient evidence that the county didn’t follow Arizona law about verifying mail-in ballot signatures for the general election. However, on May 26 the judge rejected the county’s request to sanction her. Thompson reportedly said her claims weren’t groundless or lacking in good faith.
The Western Journal website quoted Thompson, “Even if her argument did not prevail, Lake, through her witness, presented facts consistent with and in support of her legal argument.”
In his ruling on May 22, The Western Journal said, Thompson said that during the trial, “Lake’s legal team identified 274,000 signatures that were compared in less than two seconds and 70,000 that were reviewed in less than one second. But he concluded Arizona law set no minimum time for review; therefore, it was up to Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer to determine what review was adequate.”
Richer is a strong opponent of Lake and active with a PAC during the election, “Pro-Democracy Republicans of Arizona,” to oppose MAGA-endorsed candidates like her.
