President Joe Biden’s decision over the weekend to visit Ukraine while ignoring Ohio residents dealing with a toxic waste disaster has been savaged by decent, politically sensible people.
The mayor of the stricken town of East Palestine on Monday took to a Fox News program to call Biden’s behavior a “slap in the face.”
A Boston Herald columnist on Tuesday called it an example of “politicians not caring about the disenfranchised.”
And then there’s Geraldo Rivera.
The Fox News contributor thought it was just great. And he’s getting scorched because of it.
Here’s Rivera’s Twitter salute to Biden on Presidents Day: “Bravo Biden stand and deliver.”
Bravo Biden stand and deliver
— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) February 20, 2023
Leave aside the fact that Rivera apparently doesn’t know the origin of the phrase “stand and deliver.”
(Far from praise, it was used by English highway robbers in the 18th and 19th centuries to demand money from innocent travelers, basically and Old World version of “stick ’em up.” It’s easy to why “stick ’em up” has lasted longer.)
Focus on the fact that Rivera praised the president for slipping off to Europe while Americans in the heartland are confronting the kind of environmental crisis Democrats generally only fantasize about happening under Republican presidents.
And what exactly has Biden delivered? Increased U.S. tensions with Russia for little discernible purpose (the proxy war is already pretty clear on the international stage, drama isn’t improved by becoming melodrama). A photo op visit dramatized for television by ersatz air raid sirens.
That latter one fits in perfectly with Biden’s Walter Mitty memories of his own heroics, like advising Golda Meir during the Six-Day War (he didn’t, though he did meet her six years later), or getting arrested in South Africa trying to visit Nelson Mandela (he didn’t), or getting arrested marching for civil rights in the United States (he didn’t).
But it did little to help Ukraine — and nothing at all to help Americans in East Palestine, Ohio.
Normal people could see Biden’s ostentatious stagecraft for the show that it was, but that apparently doesn’t include Geraldo Rivera, the man who made a fool of himself on national television back in 1986 with a two-hour special opening gangster Al Capone’s secret vaults and has done precious little to redeem his reputation since.
Rivera is mainly a Fox News foil these days, presenting a liberal pinata that’s beaten regularly by fellow Fox personalities with far more brains.
But after his Twitter post about Biden, Rivera was in hot water with Twitter users, too, some of them calling for him to be fired:
Visiting Ukraine and offering them millions more in taxpayer funds is more important than visiting East Palestine, Ohio?! You should be fired!
— Patriot Alerts (@alerts___) February 21, 2023
Too bad he won’t do that for East Palestine, OH or our border towns
— John Patrick (@injunjohn86) February 20, 2023
You’re such a traitor geraldo.
— Surfermom1 (@OGsurfermom1) February 20, 2023
Stand and deliver what exactly? More of our money to a foreign country in lieu of delivery the same to states that are literally on fire?
— Jason Rosensweig (@jasonrosensweig) February 20, 2023
It’s important to point out here that no sensible person is saying the president should be avoiding Ukraine or the war in Europe.
Obviously, a revanchist Russia and its potential victims deserve the attention of the United States.
Taiwan deserves the president’s attention, too, against Chinese aggression. So do the nations around the South China Sea. So do Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, European currency markets and a million other problems in the world that find their way to the Oval Office and the Resolute Desk.
But it’s American citizens like those in Ohio that have the first claim on that attention.
And it’s problems in the United States that should be the priority.
If Biden had a crack team him able to operate on their own initiative, it would be fine for the White House to leave it all to, say, former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, the current secretary of transportation, and head off abroad.
But Biden’s cabinet is made up of graspers and climbers as uninformed and inept as he is. (That very much includes his vice president.)
Sensible men and women know this, which is why it’s being downplayed by the establishment media. It’s why conservatives are hitting Biden relentlessly for it on social media.
And then there’s Geraldo Rivera.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.