Biden's 'Different Picture' Ploy Put Freedom at Risk

Joe Biden's presidency is all but finished.

Unfortunately, the harm wrought by Biden's and his subordinates' short-term media cycle tactic of projecting "a different picture" has damaged U.S. national security in the long term. The distrust and cynicism the "different picture" scam bred will scar U.S. domestic politics for at least three presidential elections -- 2024 and 2028, for sure, and very likely 2032.

Why? Because presidential success in crisis and in the long term depends on credibility -- honest credibility, not media deception.

In the national security frame, deterring enemies depends on how our enemies judge the American commander in chief's will to use American diplomatic power to deter, economic power to penalize and military power to defeat their destructive schemes and violent threats.

But get the verbiage: "Project a different picture." Those are Biden's own words, uttered in the midst of a foreign policy debacle.

The history is verifiable. On Aug. 31, 2021, Reuters published a partial transcript of a July 23, 2021, phone call between Biden and then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Biden: "... I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren't going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there's a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture."

Confident propagandists love to play "Nothing to see here, move along" and its variants that slickly ignore essential context or suppress key facts.

But here's the context. Instead of punishing the Taliban and aiding the Afghan government in order to secure the evacuation of U.S. citizens and deserving Afghan nationals, Biden was concerned with political optics affecting his decision-making process and his foreign policy judgment.

"... whether it is true or not ..."

The Biden administration was attempting to hide its responsibility for its policy disaster in 2021, and political "optics" overruled reality. From 2022 to July 2024, the "project a different picture" rule protected Biden's mental and physical decline.

Dominant media -- New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, etc. -- were complicit in maintaining the mental and physical decline false "project a different picture" fairy tale.

American presidential success in crisis depends on credibility. Yet dominant media chose to lie and undermine credibility.

The instance demonstrates the rule. "To project a different picture" undermines U.S. military deterrence and our ability to deter war by convincing bad actors they will pay a heavy price. Bad actors like Xi Jinping's Communist China and Vladimir Putin's national-socialist Russia saw the Afghanistan debacle and the Biden administration's spinelessness.

Draw a straight line from Kabul in August 2021 to Kyiv in February 2022. Putin decided he had his chance to conquer Ukraine. I made that argument right after Putin's 2022 offensive. Now it's historical truth.

The Trump administration put the Middle East on the road to long-term stability and -- once establishing trust and stability -- moving to rational peace. That was the Abraham Accords.

But Biden et al. rejected all Trump policies, even those seeding peace.

Why? Great historical question. Because "Trump Bad"?

"... whether it is true or not ..." Those are Biden's words. Whether true or not, the Biden-Harris administration nixed the Abraham Accords and revived the Obama administration's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. The JCPOA essentially gave ayatollah Iran the cash to spur terrorism and brushfire wars in the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries.

Here's future history: The billions of dollars in ayatollah payoffs eventually financed the Israel-Hamas War.

Hiding Biden's mental and physical deterioration is a pure "project a different picture" operation.

Well, attempting to hide his deterioration.

The same goes for Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell." It was not Russian dezinformatsiya. It contained evidence Joe "The Big Guy" Biden received compromising Ukrainian and Chinese payoffs. Moreover, 50-odd so-called intel experts lied and backed it up.

Beltway corruption has real-world negatives that are not perception. They create a deadly vulnerability that puts America and the Free World at risk.

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To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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