Biden Forgets To Talk to His Defense Secretary

Now Secretary Austin and the White House are scrambling to paper this over.  

AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Secretary Austin testifies before a Senate Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill. AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta

President Biden can blather on as much as he wants about Republican insurrectionism that never existed. I’m going to vote that the voting public could care less about what was essentially a protest rally that went bad three years ago.  

President Trump was neither charged nor convicted of insurrection. It’s a Biden red herring meant to distract from all of the Biden policies gone bad. This will not work.  

Besides unaffordable Bidenomics, the catastrophe at the Southern border, and $3 trillion of regulations stifling small businesses — even decent employment reports have been revised lower by an incredible 443,000 in just the last 4 months — here’s another Biden policy blunder. 

In the middle of two wars, arguably three if you count the southern border catastrophe, Mr. Biden forgot to talk to his Defense Secretary for a week. And now Secretary Austin and the White House are scrambling to paper this over.  

First of all, he was in the Intensive Care Unit, which is not the best place to manage bombing missions over Iranian backed terrorist groups. Or for that matter, to manage the U.S.-Israel alliance with American hostages still held by Hamas.  

Then the Department of Defense tries to sell us that responsibility was shifted to the deputy defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks — but she was in Puerto Rico on vacation.  

Then they’re spooning out that the Chief of Staff of the Secretary’s office had the flu, so she couldn’t tell us. Here’s two equally troublesome issues. First, what about the President’s daily intelligence briefing?  

Has he been getting that without any DOD input? Or Mr. Austin’s input? Isn’t the Secretary of Defense supposed to be at the very least hooked into that briefing? Did Mr. Biden not miss General Austin?  

And then there’s the matter of the Situation Room. The Situation Room staff is supposed to know where every cabinet member or cabinet level senior staffer is every day. Because the President might call.  

From my own experience — the “sit room” people are very good. And I worked for a President who was constantly calling at all times, day or night. One Sunday evening he tracked me down in the Washington, D.C. movie theater — just saying.  

The Situation Room people and the White House operators are as good as it gets.  How could this communications chain of command break down? There’s something seriously wrong with the Biden operation. It has nothing to do with insurrection.  

The Bidens need to look at themselves in the mirror, re-check all their badly managed operations, and, while they’re at it, think about completely changing their failed left-wing policies. 

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business.


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