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Biden props up Hunter, hits Irish pub to serve up long-winded blarney, take questions from kids

April 13, 2023 | | Print Article

President Joe Biden ignored all warnings of a “severe” terrorism threat and traveled to Ireland this week, dropping by the Windsor Bar and Restaurant in Dundalk, Co. Louth, on Wednesday to discuss his Irish roots, praise his scandal-ridden son, and pay an embarrassing tribute to his rugby-playing cousin — because, as all the world knows, that’s how Biden rolls.


(Video: YouTube)

Locals swarmed the local pub, located not far from where the president’s great-great-grandfather reportedly lived, to welcome the aging leader back to his ancestral “home.”

Biden began by asking his sister Valerie and none other than Hunter Biden himself to stand up and take a bow.

“I’m here with my sister Valerie and my younger son, Hunter Biden,” he told the crowd. “Stand up guys, I’m proud of you.”

As BizPac Review reported, the mere presence of Hunter Biden on an official trip abroad amid an investigation into his shady foreign business deals was enough to spark controversy.

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“The arrogance is extraordinary. The FBI has had Hunter’s laptop since December of 2019, knows it’s entirely real and filled with a bevy of easily prosecutable crimes, yet they’ve done nothing for 3.5 years,” fumed conservative radio show host Clay Travis on Twitter. “And Joe Biden knows the FBI agents are such his little bitches that he takes his felon son on a state visit. Just brazenness & lawlessness the likes of which I’m not sure has ever existed in any of our lives.”

The president recalled the triumphs of Irish relatives, including his cousin, Rob Kearney, an international rugby player who was part of the team that crushed the world-dominating New Zealand team in Chicago.

But, Biden being Biden, he managed to mangle the story in spectacular form.

“Was a hell of a rugby player,” he said of Kearney. “Beat the hell out of the Black and Tans.”

Except the New Zealand team is called the All Blacks.

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The Black and Tans, the Daily Mail reports, were “hated police constables recruited to keep republicans in line during the War of Independence.”

Given the blatant political weaponization of the legal system against American Republicans under his administration, it is impossible not to wonder if this was an epic Freudian slip or just another “incoherent” gaffe.

Biden’s visit was to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of decades of violence with the Good Friday Belfast Agreement, and the president did manage to offer some words of “hope.”

“I’ve often said the Irish are the only people who are nostalgic about the future,” he said. “In my experience hope is what beats in the heart of all people, particularly the heart of the Irish.”

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“Every action is about hope that we can make things better, hope to build both our nations that has been passed down generation to generation by our families,” Biden continued. “And it’s hope that continues to this day.”

At another stop, Biden, with some help from Hunter, greeted embassy staff and took questions from the children at the meet-and-greet with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.

Again, things got cringe when the president was asked for “the top step to success.”

What followed was a lengthy tale about the late Senator Jesse Helms and his opposition to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The familiar story is one Biden has told before, and its moral is meant to be about not assuming the motivations behind what drives other people just because you disagree with them.

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But what the unsuspecting kid got was a rambling recollection of an unfamiliar issue, punctuated by racially divisive details, such as the fact that Helms was “not very crazy about African Americans.”

Meanwhile, Hunter had to correct the Big Guy on the finer points — such as the point of the child’s question and the state Helms represented:

HUNTER BIDEN: In the back. He’s got a question.

POTUS: What’s your question?

CHILD: What’s the top step to success?

POTUS: What’s the top what?

CHILD: Step — steps — step to success.

POTUS: What’s the top step to succ- — to success?

CHILD: Yes.

POTUS: Oh, well, making sure that we don’t all have COVID. What — why — what are we talking about here?

CHILD: Like —

HUNTER BIDEN: If you can — what’s the — what’s the key to success?

POTUS: Oh, what’s the key to success? You know what I found out is the key to success is? And I’m not sure I’m the best guy to explain it; these guys can tell you.

The key to success is whenever you disagree with someone, it’s okay to question their judgment — whether they’re right or wrong — but it’s never okay to question their motive. If you question their motive, then you never get to be able to agree.

For example, if you say to somebody, “The reason why you don’t agree with me is because you are stupid, you are bad, you are — you just don’t like the people I like.”

Instead of saying I just didn’t — just tell you why, I disagree with you because of the following things. Because once you question somebody’s motive — why they’re doing something — because you don’t know. In fact, what happens after that, you can never get an agreement, get together.

I learned that lesson a long time — I say to that to all the embassy folks, too — I learned that a long time ago.

There was a guy named Jesse Helms from South Carolina — from North Carolina — South Carolina.

HUNTER BIDEN: North.

POTUS: — North Carolina. And he was a very conservative guy who was very, very — not very crazy about African Americans when he got here. He was all — we always had fights.

And one day, I was going into the United States Senate, and Jesse Helms said — was — was on the floor of the Senate saying some terrible things about Ted Kennedy and Bob Dole, the Republican leader, who both had introduced a bill for making sure people with disabilities have access to curb cuts, access to buses, and all these things. It’s called the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And what happened was, I was very upset when I walked in to go see the Majority Leader when I heard this debate. And unfortunately, I was more afraid of the Majority Leader being late than — than I was to go and talk.

I walked in, and I guess I looked like I was angry. And he looked at me, and he said, “What’s the matter, Joe?” I was 32 years old. And I said — and I went on about Jesse Helms, that he has no social redeeming value. “How could he possibly say things like that?” I couldn’t believe it.

And he looked at me and he said, “Joe, what would you say if I told you that Jesse Helms, in 1970, sitting in his living room with his wife, Dot, in Raleigh were reading the paper. And there was a photograph of a young man on crutches — 16 years old, with braces from under his arms all the way down to his ankles, and two steel crutches.” And I said, what would you — and — “It was an advertisement for an orphanage. And it said, ‘All I want is someone to take me home for Christmas and love me.’”

He said, “What would you say, Joe, if I told you they adopted that young man?” I said, “I’d feel foolish.” Well, they did adopt him. They did adopt him.

And I said — and I went and apologized to Jesse Helms, because the idea that I disagreed with everything he said, but when he — but the suggestion that he’s doing it because he didn’t care about people with disabilities was wrong. I questioned his motive. I never did that again.

That’s a long answer to a real quick question. (Laughter.)

Yes.

CHILD: How is your dog doing?

 

On Twitter, folks were properly mortified.

“The family is grumbling. The Irish are less than impressed,” noted one user. “What a complete disaster.”

Melissa Fine
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