Vice President Joe Biden’s office is making one of the most desperate and hilarious walkback attempts in recent history, claiming that his remarks in support of China’s forced abortion policy actually meant the exact opposite of what he actually said. From a Fox News report:
"The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China's coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization," Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said in a statement late Tuesday.
"The vice president believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the one-child policy to a Chinese audience," Barkoff added.
Here’s what Biden said in his address to Sichuan University:
But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand - I’m not second-guessing - of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.
So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that's much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that.
But in the meantime, the concern that we will not make good on the investments that people have made - in your case up to $1.7 trillion total out of a very large economy is not to worry about. We could not afford - we could not afford not to make good on that requirement.
So something Biden “fully understands” and is “not second-guessing” is actually “repugnant.” Even by the tricksy “as I have always said” straw-man standards of the Obama Administration, that’s some Category 5 spin.
From this defense, we may draw only one of three logical conclusions:
1. Joe Biden has a very weak grasp of the English language, and does not understand the meaning of phrases like “second guessing” or “repugnant.”
2. The Obama Administration is composed of craven moral cowards, afraid to openly tell the Chinese government how “repugnant” they find its population control policies.
3. The Obama Administration actually has no great problem with China’s abortion policies, but finds it necessary to lie to domestic audiences and claim they see it as “repugnant,” to suppress public outrage.
None of those three possibilities is pretty. If the Administration isn’t prepared to stand by what Joe Biden says, they shouldn’t let him out in public, much less send him on an important diplomatic mission to one of Uncle Sam’s biggest creditors.
