There’s this old saying about not worrying about the mote in another’s eye before seeing to the plank in one’s own. It’s a warning that all too often applies to politicians and, frankly, to many people who make their living working with and writing/talking about politicians. Partisan politics just seems to bring that out in people, and that’s probably inevitable.
That applies to some in the legacy media’s reaction to President-elect Donald Trump’s once more receiving classified briefings. He’s receiving those briefings, of course, because he’s the President-elect, like it or not, and on Day One he will be once more the American head of state, Commander-in-Chief of the military, and oh, by the way, the guy with nuclear weapons release authority – so it seems a good idea that he has a firm grasp of the state of the planet before he resumes his seat at the Resolute Desk.
Some folks don’t see it quite that way.
Biden previously called Trump’s handling of Top Secret documents “totally irresponsible.” And during his first term, Trump raised alarms in the intelligence community when he reportedly shared secrets of a close U.S. ally with senior Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting. In the interim, federal officials charged Trump with violating the Espionage Act for unauthorized retention of national defense information, a case that is now likely to be closed in the coming weeks.
But Biden has directed his entire Administration to work with Trump’s team to ensure an “orderly” transition. That means looking past Trump’s previous history with classified information.
Assuming President Biden himself issued this direction – at this point in his obvious and ongoing decline, that’s anything but a given – it was the right thing to do. An orderly transition means that the incoming President of the United States, whether it be Donald John Trump or Joe Blow from Leaf Springs, Kentucky, has to know what the heck is going on in the world.
But remember the plank?
Asked on Thursday if Biden was concerned Trump may leak secrets, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she is “not going to get into speculation” about what Trump may do with classified information he’s given, and she referred TIME’s question to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which will be responsible for reading Trump in on the country’s closely held operations.
A big part of the warfare waged against former – and future – President Trump was around the Mar-a-Lago “classified documents” raid and all the hooraw that followed. For all the hot air blown around about this issue, one would think that the then-Former President Trump had left classified documents just lying around, like, say, in a box, in a garage, behind his Corvette, where people like his ne’er-do-well crackhead son could access them.
Oh, wait – that was Joe Biden. And what was the result of that? A brief statement that the President was an old man with a bad memory.
See Related: NEW: It’s Getting Worse—Even More Classified Documents Found at Biden Home
Melania Trump Blasts FBI’s Mar-a-Lago Raid: ‘It Serves As a Warning to All Americans’
NEW: House Judiciary Report Shows Joe Biden Committed Multiple Impeachable Offenses
TIME doesn’t discuss any of that, of course. They don’t even seem aware of the plank.
We’re accustomed to this from the legacy media and Democrat activists (but I repeat myself), of course. And while TIME may be willing to overlook Biden’s garaged boxes of docs dating back to his time in the Senate, well, fine – they aren’t a law enforcement agency, and there are plenty of other news sources that will expose Joe Biden’s peccadilloes – like this one that you’re reading right now. And the best part is that bias on the part of the legacy media aside, President-elect Donald Trump will be receiving those classified briefings, and he will resume the presidency in January.
As someone once said, success is the best revenge. And you know what the thing is about revenge? It’s patient.
