NEW YORK — The Biden Administration has made a mockery of the Washington Post’s ominous slogan, which it launched at the start of the Trump Era: “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Say what you will about President Donald J. Trump. He may have been the most transparent U.S. chief executive in history, to a fault. What was on the president’s mind? His Twitter feed told all. There were his deepest thoughts, blasted out as the whole world was watching, anywhere from High Noon to 4:00 a.m.
Trump gave press conferences, formal and informal, sometimes several times a day. He nearly always took multiple questions from journalists as he boarded or descended from Marine One or Air Force One. He made statements in the White House Press Gallery and on visits to venues across America and around the world. His near-daily press conferences during the depths of the COVID-19 crisis featured his comments, those of his medical and science advisors, and others who responded to the outbreak of the China virus. Trump usually took questions from hostile, often discourteous, and sometimes downright rude journalists.
While some complained that the president’s comments were not always scientifically sound (e.g. wondering aloud if injecting bleach might kill Xi Jinping’s exported germs), Trump’s views were out there, for everyone to cheer, boo, embrace, or resist. Love Trump or hate him, everyone knew what he had to say.
Journalists were free to visit the U.S.-Mexico border and even tour federal detention centers where Trump supposedly held “kid in cages.” Of course, those cages were built by Obama-Biden, and many of these kids were unaccompanied minors who had to be held somewhere, while their fates were sorted out. Many had nowhere else to go.
Funny, few if any who railed against Trump’s “child abuse” stepped up to adopt any of these unattached minors.
Now, under Biden, transparency dies in broad daylight.
These same federal facilities now are largely off-limits to journalists.
Visiting U.S. senators have taken pictures and videos. Biden Administration officials instructed some, including Senator John Barrasso (R – Wyoming), to erase cell-phone photos of young illegal aliens packed into frightfully tight spaces, such as those that have swelled to 1,596 percent of capacity (e.g. 527 minors jammed into an area designated to hold just 33).
“We were told to delete the pictures,” Barrasso told Fox News Channel. “No one did. You’ve seen the video coming out of all of these kids crammed together under the foil blankets, huddling together.”
When Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recorded these inhumane conditions on March 28 at a federal detention center in Donna, Texas, an officious, obnoxious, neo-totalitarian Biden henchwoman repeatedly jumped in front of his cell phone camera, “Give them dignity and respect,” she barked. Her relentless, repugnant efforts to interfere with Cruz’s recording these scenes on video looked like something in Red China. The only thing missing was a gnarled hand shoved in front of Cruz’s curious lens. This hideous woman’s face ran a too-close second to that fearsome image.
“How far is Joe Biden going to stop the American people from seeing inside the Donna CBP facility?” Cruz asked via Twitter. “Biden sent a political operative from DC to block our cameras and even threatened another senator to obstruct legitimate congressional oversight.”
Thankfully, these GOP lawmakers (and a few Democrats, such as Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas) ignored the grossly inappropriate demands of Biden’s on-site censors. These legislators’ dedication to congressional oversight and commitment to public disclosure are the only reasons that U.S. citizens know how badly Biden is abusing his Future Democrats of America.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has visited the border on two or three recent occasions.
Journalists need not apply. His border visits were closed to the press, at a time when this was arguably the No. 1 issue in the national news.
At least Mayorkas saw the border. Neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris has done so, even though Biden supposedly tapped her as his border czarina on March 24. She allegedly is spearheading the administration’s response to this crisis. And yet Harris has not conducted a press conference on this topic, nor held any border-related public events on this vital matter, in the 31 days since Biden put all of this on her plate. Instead, she has visited a Chicago bakery, a Virginia crochet store, and now is jetting off to New Hampshire, perhaps to keep open her post-Biden options.
Also, Customs and Border Protection issued and then stashed an April 5 press release about two Yemeni men who were caught at the border. They happen to be on the FBI’s Terrorism Watch List and the No Fly List. This news release ham-handedly vanished after it was posted. Thankfully, the highly transparent people at the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine snapped a copy of this communique before it disappeared completely.
Here it is, via link and a PDF facsimile below.
All of this is truly disturbing.
Joe Biden promised a “return to normal” after the endless excitement of the Trump years and a transparent approach to government. Instead, Americans have seen questions submitted in advance of White House press briefings, one press conference by Biden — on Day 65 of his presidency, the latest of any new commander-in-chief since before Herbert Hoover — and active measures to conceal the chaos that Biden unleashed on the southern frontier.
So it goes as transparency dies in broad daylight.
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The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of TrumpTrainNews.com
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
