Victor Davis Hanson: Biden a ‘hostage’ to his campaign

Joe Biden appearing in a Pro-Trump ad asking if he has dementia (YouTube screenshot)

Joe Biden is being held “hostage” by his campaign, which is forbidding him from speaking freely, contends historian Victor Davis Hanson.

“He’s holding the country hostage, but in a strange way he’s being held hostage,” Hanson told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Monday night.

He likened it to the wizard in “The Wizard of Oz.”

“It’s a false illusion. There’s somebody manipulating it,” Hanson said.

“We get glimpses of that every once in a while when he says bring the teleprompter closer, or the reflection shows that there’s a teleprompter that we’re not seeing or his campaign director cannot deny that he’s using.”

He said the Biden campaign has made a strategic decision that “the risk of running a virtual campaign is not as great as letting [Biden] be out and be a regular candidate, which he can say anything any time that might risk the entire campaign.”

Biden is not being allowed to speak out against the anti-police agenda or show support for Trump’s recent breakthroughs in Middle East peace.

Instead, he said, Biden is campaigning “on the idea that the chaos will magically disappear, the anarchy, the looting when I’m president, the recession, the quarantine, the lockdown.”

Hanson was honored with the Statesmanship Award from the Claremont Institute in 2006, the National Humanities Medal in 2007, the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism in 2002 and the Bradley Prize in 2008. An expert on the classics and military history, he’s been a professor at Stanford, Hillsdale College, the U.S. Naval Academy and Pepperdine.

He’s the author of 24 books and hundreds of articles, book reviews and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian and military history, and essays on contemporary culture.

Biden’s chief campaign spokesman recently refused to answer the question of whether or not his boss uses a teleprompter to answer questions.

TJ Ducklo, the national press secretary for Biden’s campaign, told Bret Baier his question was “straight from the Trump campaign talking points.”

Baier pointed to a recent exchange with members of the AFL-CIO in which Biden says to staff, “Move it up here.” Biden then pauses before answering the question.

Ducklo told Baier: “We are not going to — this is straight from the Trump campaign talking points. And what it does, Bret, is it’s trying to distract the American people from. …”

Baier asked for a yes-or-no answer, but Duklo continued to dodge.

“They talk about it every day, Bret, because they don’t have a coherent strategy … they talk about it every day because they don’t have a coherent argument for why Donald Trump deserves reelection, deserves four more years,” he said.

In another recent instance, Biden appeared to be reading the staff notes from a teleprompter.

“Look, Venezuela topline message is President Trump’s policy is an abject failure,” he said.

via wnd