Biden’s State of the Union was Just More Lies

Rife with half-truths and outright falsehoods, President Biden delivered a State of the Union address that extended a call for bipartisanship couched in purely partisan motives.  His proposed solutions for the problems Americans face every day – when they made any sense at all – only involved more government intervention into our lives. Here’s guessing nobody on Biden’s team has ever heard of Ronald Reagan’s most dangerous words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The American people deserve better than this – they deserve the truth.  

Let’s start with education.  President Biden began his remarks by saying that, “Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much.” That’s utterly false. It was not COVID that kept our schools closed long past the point we knew it was safe to reopen them; it was the combined efforts of teachers unions – the largest being led by Randi Weingarten – Democrat governors, and the federal government that kept schools closed.  These mandated closures had irreparable effects on our children’s education and their long-term development. Don’t count on the Biden Administration ever acknowledging any blame for this – Biden still has yet to lift the federal emergency declaration for COVID. 

Then there is our southern border. Biden claimed that his Administration has a “record number of personnel working to secure the border.” Why, then, are new records for illegal immigrants entering the United States being set every month? Why are border towns in Arizona and Texas overwhelmed by the immigration crisis?  Biden conveniently blamed Congress, saying that “America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts,” by passing his own immigration reform package. Again, that is utterly false. We have a crisis on our southern border because Biden has refused to enforce the immigration policies of the Trump Administration, especially our Remain in Mexico policy.

Refusing to enforce our own immigration laws is akin to opening the gates for as many immigrants who want to come into our country.  And not only immigrants – deadly fentanyl and terrorists, too.  Nearly 40 individuals on the terrorist watch list have been arrested since October last year.  For context, we only made 11 such arrests during all four years of the Trump Administration.  This is putting the American people at great risk, but Biden refused to take any accountability for it.

Finally, President Biden made his most astounding statements about China, saying that, “(b)efore I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was falling in the world.” 

Nothing could be further from the truth. It was the Trump Administration that executed this mammoth shift, not President Biden. As Secretary of State, I traveled all across the country and made the case to the American people that China posed a clear threat to the United States and laid out the steps we needed to take in order to confront it. Bold actions, like our shutting down of the Chinese Consulate in Houston, sent a clear message to the CCP that we weren’t going to tolerate its malign activities out of fear of reprisal.  

By contrast, President Biden failed to send a message of strength to China just days after a Chinese Spy Balloon floated over the heads of the American people. Make no mistake, nothing presents a greater threat to the American people than the Chinese Communist Party.  The fentanyl flowing across our southern border can only be made by cartels that import precursor compounds from China. TikTok, which poisons the minds of our children and harvests the private data of all Americans who have it on their phone, is owned and operated by Chinese company ByteDance.  When push comes to shove, that company serves one entity: the CCP.  Instead of mentioning these vital issues, or accounting for his Administration’s failure to shoot down the spy balloon for far too long, President Biden offered vague platitudes about valuing competition over conflict.  That’s nothing more than a message of weakness.

We shouldn’t be surprised that all Biden could offer were half-truths and falsehoods. After all, his policies have made life demonstrably more difficult for American families and have left America far weaker on the world stage. But at a time when inflation and high gas prices continue to hurt American families, the American people at least deserved to hear the truth.  President Biden failed to deliver that.