Apt Description
Years ago, when I was teaching eighth grade history at Watkins Middle School, there was an administrative failure. Our school of over eight hundred students in three grades, was left with just one Administrator, the Principal. The assistant position was left unfilled, intentionally, for many months. Our Principal was amazing, with his focus completely on what was best for our kids. But handling a school, sixty teachers, dozens of other staff, and eight hundred kids, was too much for any one person to do.
When a group of teachers went to the District to ask for an Assistant, we were told one wasn’t needed. The District Administration had their own agenda, to drive the Principal from the Middle School he “founded”. They forced him to retire: it was all “political”. A teacher friend looked at me and said: “This is un-f##king-believable.” And it was.
That term stuck in my mind, as the absolute describer of a decision or action that was not only inexcusable, but completely avoidable. It describes something that creates a crisis that didn’t need to exist. The District’s decision was made with full intent, regardless of the damage to the kids and the school. That is the definition of “un-f##king-believable”.
Skeletons in the Closet
I am a Democrat, and I voted for Joe Biden in 2020. I defended him in essay after essay, as he carefully managed his way through the first term of his Presidency. But this week is “un-f##king-believable”.
The Nation had the twice-impeached ex-President “on the ropes”. He had classified documents, illegally and knowingly, and refused to return them to the National Archives where they belonged. We had the spectacle of the FBI searching his home, and literally finding highly classified documents shoved in desk drawers with personal passports and itineraries, items that he would need and use. There was no argument that the ex-President “couldn’t have known”, the papers were right in front of him.
Not only did the FBI execute a search warrant on his home, but a Federal Grand Jury was empaneled and a Special Prosecutor appointed. Trump was caught, with his “pants down”, holding Top-Secret-Compartmentalized papers in his small hands (like that visual?). There could be no excuse.
And then someone looked in Joe Biden’s closet: talk about skeletons.
Say it Ain’t So
Joe Biden had classified documents shoved in files in the closet of an old office in Washington he used five years ago. Then, they found more classified documents in a box in his garage at his home in Delaware, right next to his treasured Corvette. And then they found more inside his home.
It’s un-f##king-believable.
I’m not naïve about Biden or Trump. I know that when they left the White House, just like when my Principal left the Middle School, there were boxes of papers that went with them. No one expects the President, or the Vice President, or the Principal, to sort and pack years of documents as they prepare to leave the building. They all finished their last days in office looking to the future and doing their current jobs. Those last days aren’t paid for them to pack up the past. Staff packed the boxes, stacked them on two-wheeled carts, and took them out to the drive. There were loaded in trucks or cars, and taken to offices, homes, and, now we know, garages.
Of course it’s a staff failure. Some intern in the White House just loaded the “top drawer” of a file cabinet into a box, and it was shipped to Mara Lago, or Wilmington. It isn’t the “high priced” staffers that get the honor of dusting off four years old files, it’s the lowest of the low. And if that system failed to protect classified documents, that’s a big problem, one that needs to be addressed.
The Difference
And there is a huge difference between Biden’s actions and Trump’s, after “the fact”. Trump spent months, even years, hiding documents, ignoring both the National Archives and the Department of Justice’s requests, and then lying to them. Biden’s lawyers found the files, and immediately turned them over to the appropriate authorities. And, obviously, when they found the first ones, they went on a “search and destroy” of all the other possible places that documents might be – hence the Wilmington house and the garage.
What should have happened? Those files should never have left the White House. And when the Mara Lago files came out, the Biden staff should have immediately started their own “search” of all the old boxes. And, maybe that is exactly what they did. Perhaps that’s why it’s coming out now. I’m sure there are low level Obama staffers now digging through files, ready to close their eyes tightly should they see the telltale signs of classification. I don’t see Barack and Michelle doing it themselves, just as I don’t expect Joe and Jill to stop what they’re doing and go trashing through the Wilmington basement.
Holy, Holy, Holy
But now, instead of being “holier than thou”, Biden, like Trump is either nefarious or incompetent. Now, instead of Trump alone with his “pants down”, they are standing naked together. And now, the House of Representatives can take the next two years and millions of dollars for “Biden Hearings” with subpoenas and excruciating questions to staff. They can “Benghazi” Biden before the 2024 election, just like Hillary Clinton. I don’t remember anyone giving up the political “high ground” so dramatically and abruptly: staff’s fault, Biden’s fault, nobody’s fault. It doesn’t really matter.
It’s just un-f##king-believable.
