Joe Biden

Stop nannying Joe… President Biden’s communications team does him a grave disservice every time it clumsily attempts to walk back a statement that it views as contrary to US policy or a verbal blunder.

That only reinforces the perception that Biden is a human gaffe machine or has lost a mental step or two.

Did it occur to any members of the White House’s crackerjack PR team that he really meant it when he committed the US to militarily defend Taiwan against an invasion by China?

Duh! It's only the fourth time that he's made such a statement.

The communications people went into overdrive after Biden’s May 23 remark, saying there was no official change in American policy and that “strategic ambivalence” remains in place.

That same fuzzy strategic ambivalence, though, encourages China to crank up the pressure on Taiwan, testing the island’s defenses 24/7.

Biden’s Taiwan statement won strong praise from Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

“President Biden is right. Credible deterrence requires both courage and clarity—and Taiwan’s vibrant democracy deserves our full support,” tweeted Jersey’s Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham chimed in: "President Biden’s statement that if push came to shove the U.S. would defend Taiwan against communist China was the right thing to say and the right thing to do.”

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, not a friend of Joe, chided the White House PR staff: “The constant White House walk-backs of the president’s statements undermine his personal credibility with allies and adversaries.”

It called the president a “master of the verbal muddle, but perhaps he is doing this intentionally.”

Knowing the US will intervene could draw in allies such as the UK, Australia and Japan to defend Taiwan, which “may give Chinese president Xi Jinping some pause about the costs of an invasion,” continued the WSJ.

Keep on talking, Joe and tell your PR busy buddies to chill. After all, you’ve been doing this international affairs stuff long before many of them were even born.

The trust gap widens between the haves and have-nots. The special geopolitical report of the Edelman Trust Barometer finds trust has surged in the US, UK and Germany due to their robust response to the Ukraine crisis.

The bulk of that surge was in the top quartile of income while the lowest quartile remained stagnant. The UK shows the biggest gap (34 points) followed by Germany (28 points), US (23 points) and France (23 points).

Richard Edelman calls the divide between the rich and poor a “watch out.”

Off with their corporate heads…. Egon Zehnder advisory firm released a CEO survey at the World Economic Forum, predicting that many of the corporate swells at Davos may not be around for next year’s extravaganza in the Alps.

The survey found that CEO departures “are becoming increasingly frequent,” just about setting a new record every year since 2011.

EZ found “an alarming proportion of the CEOs who leave the role do so unexpectedly.” Almost four-in-ten (39 percent) CEOs "suddenly resigned or were fired, or caught off guard” when the boards decided not to renew their contract.

A “significant number” of CEO exits were due to serious illness or death.

Half of the 214 large publicly traded companies surveyed by EZ appointed three or more chiefs from 2011 to 2020.

That’s great news for EZ, which is a top executive recruiter.