Special to WorldTribune.com:Has this column, penned two-and-a-half years ago, stood the test of time? Was Joe Biden's legacy already in focus back then? Following are excerpts of the original:
By John McNabb June 13, 2022
Today we have a president, Joe Biden, who is both a multimillionaire, a guy who can’t lead the country and a guy that sadly can’t read a teleprompter.
Consider a Joe Biden analogy, my version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” fashioned after Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale about an emperor who fell for a stunt perpetrated by some con artist clothing weavers who pitched the idea that their thread and clothing could only be seen by the best and brightest.
The poor old emperor bought that farce hook, line and sinker. The message was widely circulated throughout the kingdom and was widely accepted that the emperor’s new clothes, in fact, no clothes were only to be seen by the best and brightest and no one in the kingdom wanted to admit that they weren’t part of the best and brightest. Except at a parade a young child blurted out “But the Emperor has no clothes”. Reality struck.
That’s how I see the White House and the Biden Administration with the contempt they have for their fellow Americans.
This is a man who has nothing in his background that indicates competence and success. He is a guy who was quoted as saying that he “never held a real job” for instance. He has simply been a politician pure and simple.
A multimillionaire? How does that happen if you have never had a real job? Probably via his son Hunter Biden and his little band of accomplices? Selling access? I don’t know but that’s not how I have lived my life. In fact, who lives a life like that? The “Big Guy” and his “10% cut”? It appears that our Department of Justice has been effective at hiding the Hunter Biden laptop up until recently. Americans are now the beneficiaries of a politicized FBI and Department of Justice. The leader of the free world who has trouble in spontaneous conversation and climbing Air Force 1 steps.
Here is a president who had done nothing out of the ordinary in his childhood except challenge the bully “Corn Pop” and show off his hairy legs at the swimming pool. And his continued telling of how tough he was growing up. My growing up involved a cousin and two close friends all murdered at different times and years in my hometown and my playing nonstop sports to get to college. I watched a tape that somebody posted showing young Joe Biden catching a touchdown pass during a high school football game. Looking at the tape it looked like a touch football game but with pads. But at least President Biden did play and compete. It looked like he could run. My experience indicates that he would have had a tough time playing high school football where I played in West Virginia in the vicinity of coal mines and steel mills. The Weir High game on a Friday night in Weirton, West Virginia in 1961 was played right behind a Weirton Steel Mill that was in operation. Soot from the coke ovens rained down on the field of play the entire game. There were at least three future college football All Americans in that game. Then the bus trip down Cabin Creek (Coal Camp USA) to play East Bank High School where the future college football talent in that game probably numbered a dozen. I was never hit as hard in West Virginia high school football as I was hit playing college football at Duke where our opponents came from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference, Big Ten, Pacific Eight, Southwest Conference and the two military academies on the east coast. There was no touch football under the lights in my experience. Sleepy Joe said he played football at the University of Delaware, but I can find no record of him being on the Blue Hen’s roster. Maybe it was freshman football. In all fairness he has said that he graduated from Delaware State University, as well. Who knows?
He has said over and over that he was an honor student, but Joe Biden attended a law school that at the time was absolutely one of the lowest ranked law schools in America and he finished very close to the bottom of his law school graduating class. Coincidentally I was verbally admitted to one of America’s top law schools, but I didn’t have money to attend so I went on to get an MBA at one of America’s top business schools where I utilized the G.I. Bill and worked to pay my way through graduation.
President Biden recently had the nerve of telling the graduating class at The United States Naval Academy at the Navy football stadium, where I played against my friend and colleague Roger Staubach in 1964, that the two reasons he didn’t attend Annapolis and play football was two great Navy players Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino. That was a complete travesty. Joe Bellino was a great Navy All America and Heisman Trophy winner who had graduated from the Naval Academy prior and would not overlap with Joe Biden. The differences between Roger Staubach and Joe Biden are palpable and simply put besides being an All-America college football player, a Heisman Trophy winner and a great American Roger Staubach served in Vietnam which of course President Biden didn’t, and Roger Staubach went on to phenomenal professional football and later business careers. Joe didn’t. He has simply been a politician for many years raising money and trying to get reelected and more recently having his son Hunter scour the world for “opportunities.”
In an impromptu talk with some United States military members in the Persian Gulf region when he didn’t receive the expected applause, he told our military members present to “clap you stupid bastards”. I don’t how that would have been received with a similar speech to the 388th Tac Fighter Wing based at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base, one of my assignments during the Vietnam War. I am guessing that the “stupid bastards” comment wouldn’t have gone over very well.
Back to his disappointing presidency, Joe Biden inherited a 1.2% inflation rate from the Trump economy, fifty-year low gasoline prices at the pump and American energy independence of which my friend and colleague Harold Hamm was the inspirational leader. President Biden also inherited a fiscally sound and growing economy and decades low home mortgage rates. The Trump economy was unencumbered by business penalizing regulations because his administration shed the Obama job killing regulations and the Trump economy saw American manufacturing bounce back utilizing abundant, American produced clean burning natural gas of which this country is blessed with over a two-hundred-year supply thanks to the technology and ingenuity of America’s oil and gas producers. The same manufacturing jobs that President Obama said would never return. Obama never had a real job either (community organizer?) but of course manufacturing jobs came back and grew under the Trump Administration. Our American military was rebounding under Trump after Obama’s hatred of the military, but good old Joe has returned our military to a sad state. I recently heard a speech as a member of a small group of Americans in Washington D. C. where Gen. Mark Milley, our twentieth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, started his speech by praising our military for “inclusiveness” not our combat readiness or national resolve to protect our homeland and to foster peace and freedom in the world. At the time I was taken aback with Gen. Milley’s comments as I still recall with pride flying 24/7 over Laos, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam and “feet wet” over the Gulf of Tonkin off the North Vietnamese coast.
My friends, our dearly beloved nation is in real trouble and the Afghanistan disaster, I suspect is just the start under the likes of Biden, Harris, Blinken, Milley, Schumer and Pelosi. If these folks just shuttered the doors and did absolutely nothing, we as Americans would be better off today. But good ole Joe and his administration have created disasters everywhere they turn. Foreign policy disasters I have never witnessed. For instance, the Afghanistan retreat has put huge pressure on our ally India who now has Iran and China on its Western and Eastern borders. And the Indians are scrambling for Russian oil and coal. Then there is the most recent gambit from the Biden White House to establish a Palestinian consulate in East Jerusalem. In effect declaring that Jerusalem is no longer the capital of Israel. Biden’s White House has no standing in Israel other than as an ally. Of course, the Israeli government will not approve a foreign government interfering with its governance. Again, just how dysfunctional is the Biden White House? The wonderful ideas brought to Israel by the Trump White House were firmly embraced by the Israeli government. I am amazed what an American President and his administration can do to attempt to destroy America in two years!
The Federal Reserve is starting to shrink its balance sheet and raise interest rates. The recently announced .75% quarterly increase in the Federal Funds Rate will be its highest single increase in twenty-eight years. This is to combat our nation’s inflation rate which is the highest in forty years. This of course is designed to deal with our current Biden administration induced runaway inflation that we were told time and time again that this inflation was simply “transitory”. Transitory? I think not. American inflation will soon be at 9% and this Federal Reserve Bank’s severe increase in its Fed Funds interest rate and rumored additional rate increases will throw our country into a recession and yet again another Democrat induced “stagflation” made famous by our country’s worst President up to that time, Jimmy Carter. As a very young man, I remember closing on my first home loan at a 14% mortgage interest rate while Jimmy Carter was President. To define “stagflation” for those who haven’t experienced it, “stagflation” is low economic growth which negatively impacts employment and housing, with unemployment remaining high, and at the same time high interest rates.
This recession and stagflation will affect all but the nation’s wealthiest or described better as the wealthy elites including sedentary bureaucrats in Washington D. C. The Biden Recession and the Biden Stagflation of 2022 will hit our nation and our citizens with unnecessary pain and suffering. This burden will especially impact our elderly and retired citizens, lower income blue collar workers and new workforce entrants fresh out of high school, vocational and trade schools and our nation’s colleges and universities. And thank Biden, Schumer and Pelosi for the Congressional overspending which teed up the Biden Recession and the Biden Stagflation of 2022.
The Left’s progressive policies don’t work. All Americans will suffer from these progressive policies which impact us here at home and abroad.
The Biden administration put a person into his cabinet as Transportation Secretary who early on took childcare leave so he and his husband could raise an adopted child. That didn’t work for me as I was sent back to Southeast Asia when my first child was ten days old after just completing a full year combat flying tour in Southeast Asia. Joe Biden’s constant blaming of America’s oil producers and refiners won’t do a thing to lower gasoline and diesel prices.
Look at the history of America’s oil refining infrastructure. This is an industry segment that has been beaten and butchered by our government’s continuing federal rule and regulation changes for decades. The last major oil refinery was built in 1977 forty-five years ago. The reason? Our federal government and the EPA constantly and pejoratively changing environmental rules impacting American energy and our refiners. I know from experience running a large multinational company that it is difficult to run a business and make investments when the rules constantly change.
The oil refining business has a highly complicated business model. And Joe Biden is beating the Jimmy Carter drum once again against America’s energy companies. He is blaming Putin, the Ukraine, and the oil and gas companies for high gasoline prices when the blame falls squarely on him.
After his weird inauguration with paper puppets in the audience his first week proclamations included cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline permit which would have delivered 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Canada. This pipeline project already had years of vetting and preparation and ending it destroyed 11,000 high paying union jobs and erased about $2 billion of wages. The losses of additional business and economic activity in the pipeline’s projected path has no realistic economic projection but it has had a meaningfully negative impact on the towns, cities and states in the pipeline project’s path.
I had a chuckle when I saw sleepy Joe Biden attack Exxon Mobil for not paying its taxes. I started my energy career with Mobil Oil Corporation forty years ago and the merged Exxon Mobil is one of the most buttoned down and vetted companies in the world.
The American public should want to know instead if Joe Biden, Jim Biden and Hunter Biden have paid their taxes! The public should also want to know the sources of the Biden family’s new wealth, the reasons for the payments coming out of China, the Ukraine and other countries. And what, if any, strings do the Chinese Communist Party have on Joe Biden, his family and our American government? The whole Hunter Biden saga is a mystery to me. But what I have read is so disgusting that I will leave it at that, but our American citizenry is entitled to some answers.
But let’s delve a bit deeper into Joe Biden’s criticism of Exxon Mobil. Had I been a Biden advisor I would have tried to quiet this because the President’s attack came across as just plain stupid. I believe that the Democrats are still playing the dangerous game that Americans are stupid. American energy is currently making net income. That wasn’t the case a couple of years ago when crude oil was being priced at less than zero. I didn’t hear anyone come to American Energy’s rescue. No complaints and no political postulating. Nothing. Now President Biden has attacked Exxon Mobil for making too much money, not paying their fair share of taxes and not reinvesting enough. Exxon Mobil came back to President Biden that they have invested more domestically than any other company. In the past five years Exxon Mobil has invested $50 billion domestically and has increased its American oil production by approximately 50%. In 2021 Exxon Mobil earned $23 billion but, in the year prior the company lost $22.4 billion while still investing domestically. While paying their due taxes promptly. Facts always seem to clarify or negate the clueless rants coming out of this White House.
In further looking at Joe Biden’s Cabinet selections his new Energy Secretary has no real energy experience. She is a politician. Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s energy experience is losing millions of dollars of state and federal funds on green energy ventures. At least we can look back on her body of work and learn what not to do. By the way, will somebody in the Energy Department tell her how much crude oil American energy produces per day. She seemed stumped on that question.
Since the Biden Administration took office crime in America has accelerated especially in the Democrat run cities and states. Look how poor Portland, Oregon is faring with its “defund the police” and decriminalization of drugs, or Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The Democrat defund the police and immediate bail release are not working out for our citizens. We are noticing an increase in crime where we reside south of Denver. It’s hard to keep a truck if parked outside a home in the ungated developments all over Denver. Stolen vehicles are the name of the game for the crooks. And Colorado Democrat Gov. Polis’ firm stance on full term abortions still reeks of murder to me. The southern border with Mexico is still wide open bringing with it killer drugs like Fentanyl and illegal immigrants some who have bad intentions for our homeland. Coming across our border with Mexico free as the breeze. The Biden Administration is funding and quietly flying new undocumented immigrants into many American cities.
These Biden policies will not have a happy ending for our country. Homelessness is on the rise throughout America as is drug use.
And then we have the diabolical January 6 Congressional Committee weaved together in an uneven pattern by Nancy Pelosi. Nothing will come out of that except we will see Wyoming Rep. Cheney in her swan song. The Wyoming Republican primaries will be held on Aug. 16, 2022, and that day Wyoming Republicans will no longer need to deal with Cheney. What an incredible betrayal she laid on her voting base!
For the record I was nowhere near Washington, D.C. on January, 6. We don’t care to spend much time in Washington, D. C. these days due to the crime and the constant homeless begging. I don’t have a high regard for the D. C. police after the attacks on my wife and me by Antifa thugs abetted by unbelievably poor police work as we made our way to the 2017 Trump Inaugural Ball.
I have some very good friends, wing mates and others I flew with who are buried in Arlington National Cemetery who made the ultimate sacrifice only to look down from Arlington and see a dysfunctional and contemptuous federal government.
Policy and Politics matter. And we are suffering from mindless Democrat progressive policies. Our citizens are the victims. Two years of planned American deterioration. Why? Ask President Joe Biden. When he’s in town. He has spent the last four weekends at the beach in Delaware. There are reasons for his administration’s failures.
Enough is enough. Like the child in the Hans Christian Anderson tale, I am speaking up.
Our nation’s First Amendment to our Constitution blesses each of our citizens with their inalienable right to freedom of speech. If we ever lose our ability to freely communicate then we will have lost our freedom and our nation.
The Honorable John T. McNabb II was recognized in 2024 by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. He was named to two All America football squads during his senior year at Duke University. He served two combat flying tours during the Vietnam Conflict and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with Three Oak Leaf Clusters and the Air Force Commendation Medal. Mr. McNabb co-founded the Trump Leadership Council and received a Presidential Appointment to serve on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council (Board of Trustees). He was awarded the 2023 Press Freedom Prize by the Free Press Foundation. Mr. McNabb is the author of: A Nice Ride: Stories of America.
