This week, I sat down with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for the fourth episode of my “Real America with Ronna McDaniel” podcast. Our conversation made it strikingly clear that President Joe Biden’s foreign policy is weak, directionless and undoing many of President Trump’s biggest wins for America on the world stage.
From China, to Cuba, to the humanitarian crisis at our southern border, the Biden administration has offered a masterclass in weak leadership and failed policies that is directly undermining American strength across the globe.
When the COVID-19 virus began to spread in early 2020, President Donald Trump took decisive steps to protect the American people. This included the bold decision to shut down travel from China and Europe, a move which was panned at the time by the left and mainstream media as racially motivated. Biden joined in, dutifully referring to the common-sense travel ban as “xenophobia.” Those across the political spectrum now admit that the move saved lives. Trump had the wherewithal and decisiveness to make the tough, correct call while ignoring the hysteric cries of a Democrat Party eager to play politics.
Trump and Republicans also immediately called for a thorough examination into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role in covering up COVID-19’s origins, as well as withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO) for its failure to address the pandemic. Again, Biden and Democrats refused to engage on these important questions and accused Republicans of fear-mongering. Facebook, eager to do the bidding of its Democrat allies, banned posts on its platform for the thought-crime of questioning COVID-19’s origins. Now? Democrats have done a complete 180, admitting that the lab leak theory is credible in a long-overdue endorsement of Trump and Republicans’ initial assessment. Again, Democrats and many in the media owe Trump, Pompeo, and Arkansas Sen.Tom Cotton an apology for their disparaging comments, despite them being correct about China and COVID-19.
Biden has taken the opposite approach to China and his self-described “friend” Xi Jinping, instead weakly kowtowing to the CCP’s authoritarian regime. Biden immediately directed the United States to rejoin the WHO despite its apparent failure to hold China accountable on COVID-19. He has refused to take meaningful action to punish China for covering up the virus’s origin, severity and timeline. Biden’s administration has also failed to hold China accountable for distributing faulty vaccines to neighboring countries. The Chinese clearly understand just how weak Biden’s approach is. In March, the world watched as China’s Foreign Secretary berated and belittled Secretary of State Antony Blinken during the Biden administration’s first US-China summit in Alaska. That embarrassing failure made global headlines.
Biden is failing in our own hemisphere, too. Ninety miles south of Florida, the Cuban people are bravely fighting against their island’s communist regime, risking their lives to call for freedom. It took Biden days to even acknowledge communism as a failed ideology, and his administration has falsely blamed COVID-19 for the current unrest as opposed to decades of extrajudicial killings and economic devastation. Biden has refused to forcefully stand up for the Cuban people, failed to provide them with internet access to document the abuses taking place and even directed his Department of Homeland Security to tell Cubans not to seek refuge in America. This is particularly disappointing considering that Biden is presiding over a southern border crisis which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants enter America on a monthly basis, bringing crime and deadly drugs with them. Worst of all? Even in the face of the Castro regime’s crimes, Biden has pushed for the same reconciliatory approach to the regime as Barack Obama did – to disastrous effect.
Trump and Republicans, on the other hand, set a hard line on the self-enriching Castros. Once more, Biden’s weakness is leading him to enable totalitarian despots at the expense of people fighting for freedom. China and Cuba might be vastly different countries separated by thousands of miles, but Biden’s approach to both nations is identical: he is giving dictators a pass and failing to assert American strength. His refusal to hold these regimes accountable for covering up COVID-19 and suppressing their own people should embarrass every American.
Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) has served as chair of the Republican National Committee since 2017.