FILE – President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Aug. 26, 2022, in Washington. President Joe Biden is confronting no shortage of difficult issues as he travels to New York this week for the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. The Russian war in Ukraine is at a critical juncture. European fears that a recession could be just around the corner are heightened. Administration concerns grow by the day that time is running short to revive the Iran nuclear deal and over China’s saber-rattling on Taiwan. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
WASHINGTON (TND) — Political commentators, social media users and many others have been left confused by a remark made by President Joe Biden during a speech on Friday.
While speaking at the National Education Association headquarters in Washington D.C., President Biden pointed to a woman in the crowd.
You gotta say hi to me,” the president said to the woman, who he apparently recognized. “We go back a long way. She was 12, I was 30. But anyway, this woman helped me get an awful lot done.”
At the speech, the audience laughed at the remark, but it’s a comment that has attained a lot of social media attention, particularly in reference to the “She was 12, I was 30” part.
Conservative podcast host Monica Crowley suggested that dementia was a possible cause for the off-script remark.
“As dementia progresses, patients lose more of their filter and tend to blurt out the truth,” Crowley said in a tweet.
Becker News CEO Kyle Becker said the comment from President Biden was “just plain creepy,” a sentiment shared by Newsmax show host Benny Johnson, who said the remark was possibly the “most CREEPY thing [Biden] may [have] EVER said.”
Many online pointed to the age discrepancy in Biden’s remark. Some asked what a 30-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl could even work together on, and others wondered what President Biden meant when he said the woman “helped me get an awful lot done.”
President Biden has faced criticism in the past for making several women and girls uncomfortable through unwanted physical contact, something he offered “a flimsy apology” for back in 2019, according to INSIDER.
President Biden’s Friday speech to teachers and union workers at the National Education Association headquarters comes just months before the contentious 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats are reportedly expected not to fare well.
Gun violence is on the ballot,” Biden said in his Friday speech. “The idea that you start school this year and kids in many parts of the country are learning to duck and cover… rather than talking about reading, writing and arithmetic is a very different circumstance and it’s not right.
MAGA Republicans are the majority in conservative American political circles right now, President Biden claimed in his speech. The president also touched on the topic of abortion during his time at the National Education Association headquarters.
The woman who President Biden referred to during his Friday speech has not been identified as of yet.
WASHINGTON (TND) — Eighteen state attorneys general sent a letter to President Joe Biden Thursday asking him to formally classify the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Fentanyl, a synthetic version of heroin, has exacerbated the death toll from the nation’s opiate epidemic due to its very high potency, low cost and easy accessibility.
“The purpose of this letter is to propose an unorthodox solution that may help abate or at least slow the crisis’s trajectory while also protecting Americans from a mass casualty event from fentanyl,” the letter reads.
According to the letter, fentanyl is the number one killer of adults between 18 and 45 years old, and enough of it was seized last year by authorities “to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States several times over.”
Considering fentanyl’s lethality and the massive amounts being interdicted by authorities, the 18 state attorneys general argued the current situation facing Americans is not consistent with typical drug trafficking. Rather, they say, it is indicative of “either purposeful conspiracy to murder Americans or an effort to stockpile a dangerous chemical weapon.”
The letter conceded that the 18 attorney generals understood the criticisms of declaring fentanyl a WMD. However, considering the drug’s lethality, low cost and abundant availability, the AGs believe America is a sitting duck waiting for a nefarious state actor to utilize fentanyl as a weapon.
“Treating this solely as a narcotics control problem has failed to curb the proliferation of increasing quantities of chemicals that can cause a mass casualty event,” the letter concluded. “We must not sit idly by until a terrorist chooses to inflict harm using this substance on a large group of Americans—our countrymen are already dying from this poison.”
President Biden will wrap up a two-week vacation at his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., Wednesday as one unofficial count indicates he has spent more time away from the White House than his three immediate predecessors at the same point in their terms.
The president and his family, including disgraced first son Hunter Biden, left Washington for their latest getaway on Aug. 10, spending almost a week at a $20 million mansion on South Carolina’s exclusive Kiawah Island.
As The Post reported earlier this month, the first family stayed for free at the nine-bedroom oceanfront estate owned by Democratic donor Maria Allwin, the widow of hedge fund founder James Allwin.
President Biden bicycling on the beach on Kiawah Island, South Carolina.REUTERS
Later that evening, he boarded Marine One for the short trip to his home in Wilmington, Del. Biden remained there until Saturday night, when he continued on to Rehoboth Beach.
It marked Biden’s 49th visit to the First State since entering the White House in January 2021 and brings the number of days he spent in Delaware to 150, according to an unofficial count by former CBS News reporter Mark Knoller — who is respected among the White House press corps for his keeping of presidential statistics.
Knoller’s tally also showed that former President Donald Trump had spent a total of 132 days between his Mar-a-Lago resort, which he visited 17 times, and his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, where he traveled 13 times.
Former President Barack Obama on a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. AP
Former President Barack Obama had taken eight vacations 19 months into his term, racking up 38 away days to Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard.
And former President George W. Bush had visited his Texas ranch 14 times, for a total of 100 days away.
The Republican National Committee slammed Biden over the weekend for taking an extended vacation at a time when Americans are struggling to pay their bills amid the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
“How out-of-touch can Joe Biden get? Biden is spending nearly all of August on vacation while Americans are forced to cancel their summer travel because of historic inflation, high gas prices, and a recession. Biden should stop jet-setting from beach to beach and focus on fixing the crises he created,” RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said in a statement on Saturday.
The Republicans also noted that Biden was absent on the first anniversary of the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan on Aug. 15
.Former President George W. Bush and daughter Jenna Bush seen during a vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine. REUTERS
Biden’s 14-day break is not the longest among recent chief executives. Trump spent a stretch of 17 days away in Bedminster in his first August after becoming president, according to a count by the Washington Post.
Spokespeople for both presidents defended the getaways, noting that the pressing demands of the White House follow the commander-in-chief wherever they travel.
“The presidency is a nonstop job that chief executives can do from anywhere in the world,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told the Washington Examiner during Biden’s stay in South Carolina.
Former President Donald Trump visiting his golf club in New Jersey. REUTERS
“President Biden is constantly focused on the numbers that are most important to the American people: lowering costs for families, like prescription drugs and energy, reducing the deficit to fight inflation, creating the most jobs of any year in American history, growing the membership of NATO, and passing the most significant gun reform law in almost 30 years,” he said.
After Biden returns to Washington Wednesday, his schedule calls for him to travel to suburban Montgomery County, Md., for a Democratic National Committee event.
On Friday, the president and first lady plan to head back to Delaware for the weekend.
GETTYSBURG, PA. – Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, says elections in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion were more secure than some elections in the Keystone State.
Mastriano told Fox News Digital during an interview Thursday it’s critical for Republicans to win the governorship of Pennsylvania this year to ensure every legal vote is counted in 2024 and beyond.
“This is not hyperbole. It’s going to sound like it, but under the international [military] coalition in Afghanistan, we ran better elections … in a war-torn third-world country than I’ve seen in Pennsylvania in some cases here,” said Mastriano, a former U.S. Army colonel who served in Afghanistan.
“In Afghanistan, the international commission mandated voter ID. In Pennsylvania, you just show up and sign a piece of paper or mail in something with a signature, [and] we don’t even know if it matches anything.”
GOP nominee Doug Mastriano says elections in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion were more secure than some elections in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Mastriano said his goal as governor would be to revamp the state’s voting infrastructure to ensure “free and fair elections” for Republicans, Democrats and independents.
“That’s going to take a review of the voting machines. It’s going to take a review of voting logs in the counties. That’s going to take inspections to put safeguards into place,” said Mastriano. “We’re not about rigging anything. That’s actually antithetical to my life of actually serving and fighting for our country.”
In Pennsylvania, the governor has significant power with authority to appoint a secretary of state tasked with overseeing and running elections.
Incumbent Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s pick for the position has come under fire for moving key election deadlines ahead of the 2020 contest.
The appointee also has been accused of selectively urging Democratic-leaning counties in 2020 to apply for privately-funded grants for get-out-of-the-vote initiatives.
In Pennsylvania, the governor has the power to appoint a secretary of state, who oversees elections. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
“I’ve watched under Gov. Wolf that his past several secretaries of states — acting or otherwise — were far-left extreme political hacks for the Democrat Party,” said Mastriano. “Watching how they manipulated and changed election law.”
Democrats bristle at Mastriano’s rhetoric. They say the Republican nominee’s pledge to overhaul Pennsylvania’s voting infrastructure is about subverting the election process in favor of Republicans.
“He has already said he would use his power as governor here in Pennsylvania … to decertify voting machines in order to pick the winner,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said of opponent Doug Mastriano. (Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images)
“He has already said he would use his power as governor here in Pennsylvania … to decertify voting machines in order to pick the winner,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor. “That’s dangerous for anybody. Whether you agree with me or not, whether you’re for me or not, you should want to know that your vote is going to count for the person that you choose.”
Shapiro, who leads Mastriano in most public polling, told Fox News Digital the big dividing line within the race was not over politics, but rather respect for the democratic process.
“I don’t think this election is important for Democrats,” said Shapiro. “I think this election is important for democracy.”
Haris Alic covers Congress and politics for Fox News Digital. You can contact him at haris.alic@fox.com or follow him on Twitter at @realharisalic.
An 11-year-old boy on Friday was able to hack into a replica of the Florida state election website and change voting results found there in under 10 minutes during the world’s largest yearly hacking convention, DEFCON 26, organizers of the event said.
Thousands of adult hackers attend the convention annually, while this year a group of children attempted to hack 13 imitation websites linked to voting in presidential battleground states.
The boy, who was identified by DEFCON officials as Emmett Brewer, accessed a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website. He was one of about 50 children between the ages of 8 and 16 who were taking part in the so-called “DEFCON Voting Machine Hacking Village,” a portion of which allowed kids the chance to manipulate party names, candidate names and vote count totals.
Nico Sell, the co-founder of the the non-profit r00tz Asylum, which teaches children how to become hackers and helped organize the event, said an 11-year-old girl also managed to make changes to the same Florida replica website in about 15 minutes, tripling the number of votes found there.
Sell said more than 30 children hacked a variety of other similar state replica websites in under a half hour.
“These are very accurate replicas of all of the sites,” Sell told the PBS NewsHour on Sunday. “These things should not be easy enough for an 8-year-old kid to hack within 30 minutes, it’s negligent for us as a society.”
Sell said the idea for the event began last year, after adult hackers were able to access similar voting sites in less than five minutes.
“So this year we decided to bring the voting village to the kids as well,” she said.
About 50 children participated in the DEFCON hacking event for children on Friday and Saturday. More than 30 of them were able to hack into replicas of secretaries of states, where vote tallies are posted. Photo courtesy of r00tz Asylum
In a statement regarding the event, the National Association of Secretaries of State said it is “ready to work with civic-minded members of the DEFCON community wanting to become part of a proactive team effort to secure our elections.” But the organization expressed skepticism over the hackers’ abilities to access the actual state websites.
“It would be extremely difficult to replicate these systems since many states utilize unique networks and custom-built databases with new and updated security protocols,” it read. “While it is undeniable websites are vulnerable to hackers, election night reporting websites are only used to publish preliminary, unofficial results for the public and the media. The sites are not connected to vote counting equipment and could never change actual election results.”’
But Sell said the exercise the children took part in demonstrates the level of security vulnerabilities found in the U.S. election system.
“To me that statement says that the secretaries of states are not taking this seriously. Although it’s not the real voting results it’s the results that get released to the public. And that could cause complete chaos,” she said. “The site may be a replica but the vulnerabilities that these kids were exploiting were not replicas, they’re the real thing.”
“I think the general public does not understand how large a threat this is, and how serious a situation that we’re in right now with our democracy,” she said.
Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania who helped organize the “hacking village,” said that thousands of adults including voting security experts also tried to access voting machines and other voting software currently being used in U.S. elections today to become “more knowledgeable about voter technology.”
He also noted that the children who participated in their own challenge last week were dealing with replicas that were in many cases created to be even more formidable to access than the actual websites used by secretaries of states across the nation.
“It’s not surprising that these precocious, bright kids would be able to do it because the websites that are on the internet are vulnerable, we know they are vulnerable,” he said. “What was interesting is just how utterly quickly they were able to do it.”
Tonight, Joe Biden vilified millions of Americans in a divisive & angry speech that was detached from the reality of his political failures.
He isn’t actually interested in restoring the soul of the nation, he’s only interested pitting his fellow Americans against one another. pic.twitter.com/6YfYAKiph9
HomeBreaking NewsWATCH: Paul Pelosi’s DUI Dashcam Video Released Hours After Guilty Plea
August 23, 2022
California High Patrol has released photos and videos recorded on the night of a May 28 crash involving Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who pleaded guilty to a DUI charge earlier Tuesday.
Biden "did not in any way accept responsibility for the catastrophe that is unfolding in Kabul," says ABC's Terry Moran on Biden's botched Afghanistan withdrawal.pic.twitter.com/YcRCiWZRyt
A nonprofit transparency group is estimating that the first year of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s pension will amount to over $400,000 and top the annual salary that the President of the United States brings in.
A salary analysis conducted by Open The Books concluded that Fauci’s first year pension payout will total $414,000 which is more than the $400,000 brought in by the president.
Fauci recently suggested he will retire at the end of President Biden’s first term at which point he will have turned 85 years old and served as a federal employee for 59 years.
Open The Books analyzed Fauci’s salary, which is currently $480,654 per year but is expected to shoot to $530,000 by 2024, and factored in “conservative” pay bumps and annuities based on previous years to estimate his pension.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a news conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Open The Books reported last year that Fauci is the highest paid federal employee in the United States and earns more than the president, every general in the military, and the country’s other 4.3 million federal employees.
“Dr. Fauci has been the highest-paid federal employee for years, and now we know that even in retirement his pay will be history-making,” OpenTheBooks.com Founder & CEO Adam Andrzejewski told Fox News Digital in a statement. “With the flexibility to spend his days as he wishes, Fauci will rake in more than the leader of the free world earns in a year. There’s seemingly no limit to the money taxpayers will have to spend on him in perpetuity.”
Fauci’s NIAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Politico reported Monday that Fauci said he will retire by the end of Biden’s term following more than five decades of federal service under seven different presidential administrations.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, lowers his face mask as he prepares to testify (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP / AP Images)
The 81-year-old has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, Reuters reported. He became the face of the American government’s policies regarding efforts to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Fauci has become one of the most controversial political figures in the country after advocating for strict lockdown measures during the coronavirus pandemic – a plan that has drawn the ire of conservatives who have accused him of inconsistent positions on issues like masking.
Republican politicians, most notably Sen. Rand Paul, who is a medical doctor, have also criticized Fauci for his agency’s connection to taxpayer funds that supported gain-of-function research on bats infected with coronaviruses at a lab in Wuhan, China.
“Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on,” former Trump trade adviser Dr. Peter Navarro said last year about his time in government with Fauci.
Fauci responded this week to calls from Republicans in Congress to investigate his leadership and COVID-19 response should the GOP regain the majority in one or both houses come this year’s midterm elections.
Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, speaks alongside U.S. President Joe Biden (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images / Getty Images)
“They’re going to try and come after me, anyway. I mean, probably less so if I’m not in the job,” Fauci said. “I don’t make that a consideration in my career decision.”
“I don’t think they can say anything about the science,” he added. “If that’s what you want to investigate, be my guest. My telling somebody that it’s important to follow fundamental good public health practices – what are you going to investigate about that?”
Fox News’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report
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