Media ignores Maui fires and Biden’s heartless ‘Katrina moment’.

Shameful Indifference: Biden’s Response to Maui Wildfires

It’s hard to imagine a ​more shameful,⁢ indifferent response to the tragic wildfires‌ in⁣ Maui than what we’ve seen from President Joe Biden in ⁤recent‍ weeks. Upon⁢ first being‍ asked about the deadly fires,​ which ‌have ⁢ killed 115 people ‌and counting, Biden, who was on vacation at the time, simply said, “No ⁤comment.”

When he finally got around to visiting Hawaii (after a second‍ vacation) nearly two ‍weeks after the fires had⁤ devastated⁣ swaths of Maui, with more than 1,000 people still missing and the death toll rising daily, Biden ​embarked on a series ‍of‍ almost unbelievably crass and heartless comments.

Biden’s ‍Insensitive Remarks

• He joked about how ⁢hot⁢ the ground was
• Mispronounced the names of every Hawaii elected official
• Told a complete lie about⁣ how his house once almost⁢ burned ‌down
• Joked about how he knows what they are feeling because ​he almost lost his corvette
• Fell asleep while‌ meeting with Maui residents
• Opened his remarks in‍ Maui by invoking ⁤his ⁣late wife and daughter

Hard to believe, but it’s true. Here’s Biden apparently falling asleep during a ceremony honoring Maui’s dead.

Hours later,⁣ he was back on​ a plane to Lake ​Tahoe.

Whatever one thinks of⁣ Biden, his behavior in Maui was simply appalling. In a healthy society with a functioning free press, he would be ​justly excoriated for⁢ his performance. Yet ⁢the response of establishment media, not just to Biden’s callousness‍ but⁢ to the whole story of the Maui fires, has been ‍a collective shrug.

Media Bias: Comparing Biden to ‌Bush

Contrast this to a previous​ tragedy: Hurricane Katrina in ⁢late summer 2005. Then-President George W. Bush was relentlessly attacked by the national press for months after Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people. Arguably, Katrina was the end of Bush’s presidency. He never recovered from it, mostly because the corporate press maintained the fiction, even years later, that ⁣the botched⁤ response was ‌all ⁢his fault —‌ and worse, that his indifference was motivated by racism because most of the victims were black.

Hurricane Katrina was indeed‌ one of the worst natural disasters in American history, and the loss of life and destruction in New Orleans was absolutely ⁣jaw-dropping. But ⁢the chief villain wasn’t Bush, it was state and local officials, ⁣whose corruption‍ and incompetence‍ made the situation far worse than it otherwise ‌might have been.

Chief among these was New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who would later be convicted and sent ⁤to⁢ federal prison on a raft of criminal charges including wire fraud, bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering — some‌ of which occurred during the response to Katrina. It was Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, not Bush, who made ​the ‍decision not to order a mandatory ‌evacuation of New Orleans until just​ 20‌ hours ​before‌ the‌ storm made landfall, stranding tens of thousands of people across the city, many of ⁤them trapped on their rooftops surrounded by floodwaters.

It⁤ was likewise Nagin, not‌ Bush, who directed people to take shelter in the Louisiana⁢ Superdome, despite not having provisioned the massive structure with adequate food or water for the ‌26,000 people who wound up there. ​And​ it was Blanco, not Bush, who delayed activating the Louisiana National Guard to maintain law and order​ on the streets, and who ​waited a⁢ full two ⁢days after ​Katrina hit the coast to request federal troops.

But the media didn’t focus⁣ their fire on Nagin and Blanco. They blamed Bush. What did Bush do, exactly? Like Biden, he’d been on ⁣vacation before disaster struck, on a ranch in Texas. This was somehow construed as uncaring. But unlike ​Biden, he cut his trip short and returned to‍ Washington to direct the federal emergency response just 48​ hours after Katrina made landfall. On the way back, he flew over the affected areas, opting not to land for fear that his security detail would hamper ‌relief efforts actively⁣ underway.

The media seized on the flyover as⁢ an example of how aloof and indifferent‌ Bush was to the suffering in⁣ the city⁢ below.⁤ The sluggishness of the FEMA response — which was partly a consequence ⁣of ‍delayed requests from state and local officials and partly a perennial feature of federal bureaucracy — played into this narrative, which reporters and editors pushed hard.

The truth is, ⁤the media hated Bush for the Iraq War, which wasn’t ‌going well at‍ the time, ⁢and Katrina was their chance to irreparably hurt his reputation and hobble his presidency. And⁢ it worked.

Now comes‌ Biden’s “Katrina moment,” but instead of incessant propaganda about ⁢how Biden doesn’t care about native Hawaiians, or poor people, or the dead children buried under the charred⁢ rubble‌ of Lahaina, we get CNN’s Bill Weir waxing poetic about how Biden “said the right things” and‍ served as ‌“empathizer-in-chief” during his brief⁣ visit to Maui:

All of this, by the⁤ way, is not to bemoan the hypocrisy of the media’s treatment of ‍Republicans versus Democrats. As we know, it’s not hypocrisy but hierarchy at work here. Biden gets a pass from the media because they’re on the same ⁤side, and ‍theirs is the side with all‍ the power.

But it is to ​say that you should believe what your own eyes and ears tell you: Biden doesn’t really‍ care about the destruction in Hawaii, and‍ neither does the corporate press. The last thing regime media outlets are going ⁤to do, even in ⁣the face of a⁢ deadly natural disaster like this one, is criticize Democrats in power.

That’s true of ⁢Biden as much as it’s true ​of local and state Democrats in Hawaii. ​The media will not⁢ decry the⁢ absurdity of Hawaii Gov. Josh⁣ Green’s claim that climate change somehow “amplified” the ⁣cost​ of human error. They​ will⁤ not⁣ dwell overmuch on M. Kaleo Manuel, the Hawaii water⁤ official and left-wing climate activist ⁣who‍ refused to release ​water to landowners to fight fires.‍ They ⁢certainly‌ won’t bring up Manuel’s pagan, woke worldview, that water is “one of the earthly ⁢manifestations of ​a god,” and that water shouldn’t just be something we use but something we “revere.”

They won’t do any of that because all of⁢ these people are Democrats, and Democrats⁢ get ⁣protection from the media. Unlike Hurricane⁢ Katrina, the corporate press has no convenient Republican culprit to blame for the Maui wildfires, ​no hapless President Bush to beat up and excoriate. And since any in-depth coverage of the disaster would hurt the Democrats in power, from Maui to Washington, the media will do the bare minimum of‍ coverage and, as soon as they get the chance, happily move on.