My grandfather, Jack Flaherty, was a descendant of Irish immigrants who came to America from the Aran Islands, County Galway. His wife and my grandmother had relatives in Cahersiveen, County Kerry. Together, they had eight children and 30 grandchildren. Growing up, they were the definitive source on all things related to the Emerald Isle, including American politicians who hide behind their Irish heritage in an attempt to appeal to voters.
Whenever Biden appeared on the T.V., blabbering away about something with the charisma of a used car salesman, my grandpa would typically take a sip from his glass of red wine or Manhattan and mutter, &#8220;Joe Biden, what a jerk.&#8221; My grandmother would then poke her head out from the kitchen, shake her head, and repeat the line. 
Before changing the channel, my grandfather would say, &#8220;Joe Biden — the phony Irishman.&#8221; 
That phrase undoubtedly stuck because it was said by my grandfather, but perhaps no better words today can summarize Biden&#8217;s time in office as president. It seems everything about it has been &#8220;phony.&#8221;
America has been struck by a maelstrom of bad news since January 20, 2021. Our nation has had to deal with record inflation, a gasoline crisis , and two different kinds of international invasions — one at our southern border emboldened by the promise of American citizenship and the other in Europe emboldened by weak American leaders.
If you ask the president, all of these issues are beyond his control. There is nothing he can do about it. It is almost as if he has no desire to be a leader and take responsibility, he simply wants to &#8220;<a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/one-in-seven-people-on-the-dole-has-never-worked-a-single-day-29278033.html">live on the dole</a>,&#8221; as our friends overseas say. 
But a look at his record shows these problems were caused or exacerbated by Biden&#8217;s policies, despite his &#8220;phony&#8221; claims otherwise.
Inflation:
Recently, Biden lamented that the American people believe that government spending has caused inflation. &#8220;I&#8217;m sick of this stuff,&#8221; he<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/im-sick-of-this-stuff-biden-complains-that-the-american-people-believe-increased-government-spending-causes-inflation"> barked</a> at House Democrats last Friday, in reference to the correctly held economic belief.  That characteristically jerk-ish reaction was in response to the news, as The Daily Wire reported. that &#8220;the rate of inflation grew in February by nearly 8% in the last year, with prices for everything from gasoline to bread, milk, and eggs soaring.&#8221;
Biden claims big government spending policies are not to blame. But even the Associated Press reported that is not true. 
&#8220;Government spending has been a clear factor behind rising consumer prices, though it’s not the only one,&#8221; the AP<a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-biden-covid-health-business-772e1eb45fb5981f3a2b6f2a4b0d201f"> noted</a> on Tuesday. &#8220;Biden last year signed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package known as the American Rescue Plan — and many economists say that caused inflation to run higher than it otherwise would,&#8221; the paper continued.
&#8220;But the problem is that Biden pumped more money into the economy than it could handle. Administration officials said before the relief package was passed that the greater risk was do too little to help the economy than to do too much. The implicit risk was inflation, though the tradeoff was faster hiring and stronger growth,&#8221; the paper added.
We&#8217;re being hit with that inflation today and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/16/federal-reserve-raises-rates-inflation-rages-00017834">will be for quite some time</a>.
Gas Prices:
America is facing the highest gas prices since 2014. The White House has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/putin-price-hike-jen-psaki-invites-peter-doocy-to-join-her-in-the-white-houses-gas-price-blame-game">dubbed</a> it the &#8220;Putin Price Hike,&#8221; and while some of it can be attributed to the tyrant in Moscow, most of it can be blamed on the boy from Scranton – as Biden likes to call himself. 
Gas rose more than one dollar from the time Biden took office — before Putin&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine. In November, he attempted to solve the issue by releasing fuel from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He has claimed he can practically do &#8220;nothing&#8221; else. But as Katie Tubb,  senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation&#8217;s Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/press/fact-checking-bidens-excuses-rising-energy-prices-and-empty-shelves">explained</a>, Biden has done &#8220;worse than nothing&#8221; on the matter. He has actively discouraged investment in the industry and enacted policies that drive up cost:
<blockquote>Rather than relieve regulatory roadblocks to affordable energy—like lifting the Jones Act and the ethanol mandate—President Biden has aggressively deployed regulators across the executive branch to make it more difficult to explore  for and produce oil, construct and operate pipelines, access financing and private sector investment, and use gasoline in cars and trucks.  
President Biden made a political example out of the Keystone XL pipeline and has so far failed to show leadership, as his counterpart in Canada has done, to defend existing pipeline infrastructure serving American families across the country. He has used his bully pulpit from day one to vilify the oil industry rather than implement simple and effective policy solutions. Further, President Biden continues to boost the so-called ‘Build Back Better’ bill, which would increase oil prices by adding new fees and regulations on oil producers and cutting access to oil off American coasts. </blockquote>
It simply is not accurate to say the Biden team has not driven up the cost of gasoline.
Illegal Immigration: 
It does not get much attention in the news these days, perhaps because in order to be &#8220;news&#8221; something has to be surprising, but illegal immigrants are still coming into the United States at high rates. Most of that is happening at the southern border. 
In late February, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced &#8220;there were 153,941 migrant encounters in January 2022. In January 2021, there were 78,414 migrant encounters,&#8221; Fox news<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/220000-illegal-immigrants-evaded-border-patrol-since-october-source"> reported</a>. Since October alone, there have been more than 220,000 known &#8220;got-aways&#8221; meaning people who have come in who have evaded arrest by CBP or other authorities. That number does not include how many unknown got-aways there were. It also does not include immigrants arrested and released back into the U.S.
In a detailed piece, the Center for Immigration Studies <a href="https://cis.org/Arthur/CBP-Encounters-Southwest-Border-Rose-February">explained</a> what&#8217;s causing this surge:
<blockquote>The main driver of illegal immigration to the United States is President Biden’s immigration policies, or more specifically, his undoing of border policies implemented by Donald Trump that had successfully brought control to the Southwest border. As Bloomberg Opinion explained in January: “Biden’s rush to undo any immigration policies associated with his predecessor has contributed to upheaval at the border and encouraged more people to risk their lives trying to reach the U.S.”</blockquote>
&#8220;In the first full 12 months of the Biden administration, Border Patrol has apprehended more than 2.177 million illegal migrants, a number that does not even account for an estimated half-million-plus aliens who eluded Border Patrol and successfully made it into the United States,&#8221;  CIS added.
AS CIS said, we can expect those numbers to continue as it does not appear there is any sense of urgency to address the problem.
Russia&#8217;s Invasion of Ukraine: 
Many people believe that Biden&#8217;s actions in Afghanistan were not only a blight on American history, but signified to the world that the U.S. was no longer competent enough to maintain American hegemony. This then emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine as Biden&#8217;s weak behavior became all-too-predictable, some argue. One of those people arguing that theory is former President Donald Trump himself. 
In a podcast interview, Trump <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Dsezq6ZDnKkkmPvCrwvHB">said</a> that when Russia saw &#8220;the incompetence, the gross incompetence of [the Afghanistan withdrawal] I believe that Putin became a different man.&#8221; 
&#8220;When he saw that, he viewed the United States differently. He no longer respected the United States,&#8221; he remarked.  
That view is also held by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and many others. Cruz <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-weakness-russian-aggression-republicans">recently blasted the administration</a>, saying, &#8220;Biden-Harris officials are to an enormous extent directly responsible for this crisis.&#8221;
Rather than take actions that would deter the invasion, &#8220;[the Biden administration] instead settled for an endlessly deferred and wholly un-credible strategy of responding to Putin&#8217;s aggression after an invasion,&#8221; Cruz added. &#8220;They have pursued bizarre tactics like declassifying American intelligence and trying to shame Putin. That approach has failed.&#8221;
Even White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jen-psaki-notices-a-pattern-when-putin-decides-to-invade-ukraine">noticed</a> that Putin only acted aggressively toward Ukraine on two occasions in the last eight years — both of which occurred when either President Barack Obama or Biden were in charge. But, perhaps due to the proverbial fog of war, she was unable to make a critical connection as to why that &#8220;pattern&#8221; may be. 
With these four problems, the American people are not in the best mood. Approval ratings for Congress and Biden are in the dumps. But even here, if you were to ask the president or his advisors why the country is dissatisfied with the state of things, they would tell you it&#8217;s due to mental anxiety caused by the pandemic obscuring their world view. &#8220;In other words, you&#8217;d have to be mentally ill to not appreciate Biden,&#8221; they argue as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meads-joe-biden-blames-nations-foul-mood-on-psychological-impact-of-covid-19">noted</a> before the president&#8217;s State of the Union address this March. 
That defense does not even pass the smell test.
Thank goodness for St. Patrick&#8217;s Day. It couldn&#8217;t come sooner for a bit of reprieve from the current state of affairs. So, if you feel like having a drink to take the edge off on Thursday, go right ahead. Just please don&#8217;t toast to that phony Irishman. Sláinte! 
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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MEADS: Happy St. Patrick’s Day — Except To Joe Biden, The ‘Phony Irishman’