Joe Biden and the art of quiet quitting

President Joe Biden still has forty-two days left in office, but rather than go out in a blaze of glory, he appears to be embracing the “quiet quitting” craze so popular with younger generations, in which employees “continue to put in the minimum amount of effort to keep their jobs, but don’t go the extra mile for their employer.”
 
President-elect Donald Trump, meanwhile, is giving an early Christmas present to the 77,289,122 people who voted for him by overshadowing the current commander-in-chief on the international stage.
 
As Israeli paratroopers deploy to Syria and the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, it’s Trump who is wearing the pants in the on behalf of the US overseas. He met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last week at the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral, where he also had a friendly encounter with French president Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders. The Independent reports that after talking to Zelensky, Trump “called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end ‘the madness.’”
 
In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump also weighed in on the Syria situation yesterday, writing, in part:
 
Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.
 
Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!
 
Trump has been busy, offering his first sit-down interview since being elected. Talking to Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, Trump discussed his plan of action for the beginning of his second White House term.
 
Biden, meanwhile, has flown under the radar with a trip to Angola, where he “talked up a US commitment of $3 billion for the Lobito Corridor railway redevelopment linking Zambia, Congo and Angola.” The president also made a blip in the headlines when he appeared at a ceremony commemorating the sacrifices made at Pearl Harbor on December 7.
 
Even when Biden has made the token public appearance, the result has been more of a reminder why he was asked to abandon his re-election campaign than a bittersweet farewell. After expressing belief that Austin Tice, the journalist captured in Syria in 2012, is still alive, Biden immediately forgot who he was talking about when a reporter issued him a follow-up question about Tice.
 
At this point, it seems as though Biden wouldn’t mind — or notice — if Trump took the reins a few weeks early.

 -Teresa Mull

On our radar

‘FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT’ …is right. Donald Trump issued a non-veiled jab at the Biden family over the weekend while promoting his Trump brand colognes and perfumes, posting about the new “Fight, Fight, Fight” line alongside a picture of First Lady Jill Biden. “Great Christmas gifts for the family,” he wrote on Truth Social. 

CEO SHOOTING SUSPECT ID’D The person suspected of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has been identified as twenty-six-year-old Luigi Mangione, who was found with a Unabomber-style manifesto on his person when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania.

CHENEY IN CHAINS? Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative from Wyoming, responded to Donald Trump’s suggestion that she and other members of the January 6 Committee should go to jail for destroying evidence related to the investigation by saying Trump is continuing his “assault on the rule of law.”

Walz on why he lost

Democrats have finally identified why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump: Americans weren’t ready for brat summer.

Governor Tim Walz is trying to shift the blame from the misappropriation of the roughly billion dollars spent by the Harris campaign to Americans’ opposition to the “positivity” of the Harris campaign.

“I really, I thought we had a positive message, and I thought the country was ready for that,” he told KSTP-TV. Harris’s campaign started off with a positive message; Democrats across the country were exuberant that they were unburdened by what has been with President Joe Biden’s failing mental state. However, her campaign’s tone quickly shifted into one of fear-mongering as she and her allies ran against Project 2025, a think tank report repeatedly disavowed by Trump on the trail.

Trump, Democrats warned, would ban abortion — even though he said he wouldn’t. Trump would be a dictator on day one, they said — referring to a joke he made with Sean Hannity. Trump would endanger not only Americans, but even global stability — despite the Biden administration presiding over utter chaos in the Middle East.

Walz’s blame game notwithstanding, there were glaring problems with Harris’s campaign that were evident even before she lost to Trump. Americans viewed her as the San Francisco liberal she was for almost sixty years despite her 100-day pivot to the center.

It wasn’t “positivity” the Americans rejected, despite Walz’s claims; for many voters, it was an undemocratic coup that took out the sitting president. It was years of lies that Biden was a greater orator than Cicero — you just had to hear him behind closed doors. And it was the screeds of negativity shouted from the rooftops by Harris and her online army of influencers on social media and in traditional media. 

–Matthew Foldi

McCarthy and Gaetz squabble on

Both Congressman Matt Gaetz and Speaker Kevin McCarthy resigned from Congress, but that hasn’t stopped their bickering. 

Gaetz famously helped oust McCarthy as speaker, and McCarthy has been relishing in Gaetz’s public humiliation and resignation following his brief but aborted bid to become President-elect Trump’s next attorney general.

McCarthy told Fox News on Sunday that Gaetz’s nomination was doomed to begin with, but he doesn’t fault Trump for picking the controversial Florida man so much as he faults Gaetz for “lying” to Trump.

“No one thought that [the nomination] would pass,” McCarthy said. “I blame Matt Gaetz for lying to the president about his ethics report. People know that. That’s why he made the motion against me. People know.” McCarthy has long maintained that the House’s ethics investigation into Gaetz, which has hung like a sword of Damocles over his head for years, was Gaetz’s main motivation for ousting him as speaker.

While Gaetz did resign from Congress, the scuttlebutt is that he is preparing to mount a gubernatorial campaign. In addition to joining Cameo, he has been tweeting about his desire for Donald Trump to name Lara Trump as the next senator from Florida, and his wife Ginger teased that the next Gaetz plans will come as soon as this week.

How McCarthy plays into them remains unclear, but it is evident that he is watching closely from the sidelines.

–Cockburn