The refugee resettlement numbers are only the latest "confusion" on Biden's statements

Yesterday, Allahpundit covered the announcement that the Biden administration would be keeping the same caps on refugee resettlement numbers that had been in place at the end of the Trump administration. This immediately put the progressive left into a state of outrage, as one might expect. To put the point I’m about to make in perspective, keep in mind that this wasn’t some rumor on Capitol Hill being leaked out from anonymous sources. President Biden signed an emergency determination with the numbers locked in. But after the outrage from liberal Democrats began showing up on social media, it was only a matter of hours before the “confusion” over what Biden really meant had to be “clarified.”

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Not long after that, the official line was officially declared to be unofficial. There was just some sort of misunderstanding, right? Of course, Uncle Joe wasn’t going to go back on his campaign promises. But as we’ll see in a moment, this is far from the first time that Team Biden has immediately walked back one of their announcements. (National Review, emphasis added)

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday afternoon that President Joe Biden will raise the Trump-era refugee cap by May 15, and suggested that earlier reports to the contrary were the product of “confusion” about the determination the president issued hours earlier

In a statement released Friday afternoon, Psaki attributed the delay in raising the cap to lengthy deliberations about the optimal level of refugee resettlement.

“The President’s directive today has been the subject of some confusion,” Psaki said in a statement. “Last week, he sent to Congress his budget for the fiscal year starting in October 2021, which honors his commitment. For the past few weeks, he has been consulting with his advisors to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and October 1.”

There it is again. Jen Psaki had to be sent out to clear up the “confusion” people felt about something the White House put out. The problem is that the “confusion” wasn’t on the part of the reporters or consumers of cable news. The directive Biden signed had very specific numbers included in it. But careful observers are to be forgiven if they’re starting to lose track of how many times Psaki has been sent out with a mop bucket to clean up a mess like this. Let’s take a brief walk down memory lane.

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Earlier this month, a State Department spokesperson gave a public briefing to the press corps in which he said that the United States was actively working with partners and allies to discuss whether or not we would boycott the Beijing Olympics this winter. Only hours later, after China began rattling its sabers, a different, anonymous State Department spokesperson “clarified the confusion” by saying that, of course, we weren’t talking to anyone about anything of the sort.

Earlier this week, Psaki announced that the United States had finalized a deal with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries wherein they would beef up their border security to stem the tide of migrants heading north. Guatemala almost immediately issued a statement basically saying they had no idea what she was talking about, that there was no new deal, and the border security measures had been in place before Biden was even sworn in.

On that issue, one session with the mop and bucket apparently wasn’t enough because they were still doing it at the end of the week. On Monday another White House spox told MSNBC that we had new deals with Mexico and the Northern Triangle Countries, but yesterday another State Department spokesperson had to come out yet again and say that there were no such agreements and “each of the countries have decided on how to strengthen border security in ways that are appropriate for them.”

Then there was the issue of using eminent domain to seize property along the southern border for the construction of the wall. This was one of Joe Biden’s most fervent and repeated promises on the campaign trail. That was all going to end “on day one.” He even signed an executive order to that effect shortly after being sworn in. But then, this week, a Texas family lost their land in an eminent domain suit for precisely that purpose and we learned that another 140 nearly identical cases were pending. A spokesperson for the Justice Department told reporters that there was some “confusion” over the timeline for prosecuting such suits while the White House continued to insist they weren’t going to be doing that.

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And how about that whole court-packing scheme? First Biden and Harris flatly refused to answer the question before the election. Then the President said he still wasn’t pushing packing the Supreme Court, but would establish a commission to study the matter. No sooner was the ink dry on that order than Democrats introduced a bill to pack the court immediately. Nancy Pelosi was forced to slam on the brakes on Biden’s behalf and say that the bill wouldn’t come up for a vote.

Can there really be this much confusion inside of the White House and in their communications with both their own people and the leadership of their own party in Congress? We have White House spokespeople coming out and telling the press corps one thing, only to have someone else come out with a different story in a matter of hours on at least a weekly basis. Biden’s team is making public announcements that last only as long as it takes for either AOC or the CCP to complain about them and then the story changes, sometimes making a 180-degree turn. So does this mean that we’re getting intentionally deceptive information from the White House, that they don’t know what’s going on internally, or that Biden just keeps changing his mind in reaction to the backlash he receives? I’m honestly not sure which choice would be worse.

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