Lucas: Biden’s off-the cuff stories for the dogs

Who would you say flees faster from the press these days — President Biden or Hillary Clinton?

Probably Biden, because he has more opportunity to interact with the media than Hillary does, but it is a close call.

Yet Hillary is no slouch either when it comes to fleeing the fourth estate. She’s had a lot of practice.

Just last week she fled reporters in Manhattan who sought to ask her about new federal court filings by special U.S. prosecutor John Durham that allege that she paid people to spy on former President Donald Trump when he was a candidate in 2016 and when he became president.

To her credit though, she did respond the next day on Twitter, Trump’s favorite form of communication. She said, “Trump & Fox (News) are desperately spinning a fake scandal to distract from his real ones.”

Still, the edge must go to Biden because, unlike Biden, Hillary holds no official office although unofficially to her fans she is still President in Waiting.

Biden, therefore, is more in demand to answer burning questions that affect the lives of millions of Americans, let alone people around the world.

But Biden does not answer questions from reporters. He does not even allow them to ask questions in the first place.

Instead, he acts like he is standing in Madame Tussauds London Wax Museum. He squints into a teleprompter and reads from a large typed scripted statement, as he did last Tuesday’s “press conference” on Ukraine.

Then, in what can only be described as an insult, he turned his back on the press, as he usually does, and shuffled off to shelter-in-place somewhere, trailed by shouted but unanswered questions chasing him out the door.

Perhaps the reason he does not answer questions is because he has no answers because the words he reads may not even be his own, but words cobbled together by others.

It is when Biden goes off script — or takes questions — that he gets confused, mumbles, rambles, contradicts himself and digs up stories, some of them weird, that may or may not be true.

Take his dog story, for instance. Talk about weird. Speaking before a meeting of the National Association of Counties last Tuesday, Biden, once a county commissioner in Delaware, got a call one night from a woman who lived in a wealthy Republican neighborhood. She called a about a dead dog on her lawn.

“And I said, ‘yes, ma’am, did you call county?’ ” Biden related. “And she said, ’Yes, they’re not here.’ And I said, ‘we’ll get them in the morning.’ ”

The woman balked. “’I want it removed now. I pay your salary,’’’ Biden quoted the woman saying.

“So, I went over. I picked it up. She said I want it out of my front yard. So, I put it on her doorstep,” Biden said. The crowd laughed and applauded. Biden, a working-class Democrat, had gotten even with a wealthy Republican woman.

The woman, probably upset to find a dead dog on her front lawn, was no doubt traumatized to find the dead dog on her front steps. But Biden thought the episode, if true, was funny and laughed along with the crowd.

But is the story true? Or is it another figment of Biden’s imagination?

The story did not get much, if any, play in the mainstream media, which provides cover for Biden whenever possible. It would not want to turn the millions of horrified dog lovers against Biden, causing him to crater even further in the polls.

Just imagine what the media would have done to a Republican or to Trump had he told such a weird story.

But you do not have to wonder because there are examples.

Recall the beating 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, running against the sainted Barack Obama, took from the left leaning media when it was reported that he once drove on a family vacation with his dog on top of his station wagon in a windshield equipped carrier. The incident haunted Romney throughout the campaign. The media made sure of that.

Yet, at the same time the media killed, ignored or buried the 2012 story about Obama actually eating dogs as a youth growing up in Indonesia, a story he told in his book “Dreams From My Father.”

Romney’s dog was a pet. Obama’s dog was a meal. Biden’s dog was a joke.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

 

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/Au85NEf