“First the tide rushes in, plants a kiss on the shores, then rolls out to sea, and the sea is very still once more” — sung in the deep voices of the Righteous Brothers — resonated in my head during my daily walk April 7 on Hendry’s Beach in Santa Barbara. The song stimulated thoughts that politics had the same type of movements.
For example, the “rushing in” of COVID planting a sour “kiss” on our “shores” created the opportunity for a few to take advantage of the thoughts best described as “Don Quixote attacks the ‘circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.’ ” (Apologies to Miguel de Cervantes and the original 1968 film “The Thomas Crown Affair.”) This set the stage for the 2020 election of a candidate who previously lost two presidential races: Joe Biden.
The Trump vaccines causing COVID to “roll out to sea,” makes one wonder where we would be if Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s description of President Biden’s stopping work as “putting a lid on the day” was extended to include all of Mr. Biden’s work in 2021.
Dealing with the daily issues he created would be like playing the game “Whack-a-Mole.”
So let’s just focus on his three major decisions.
Energy under former President Donald Trump was the “tide that raised all boats,” including the Democratic Party, by improving the lives of every U.S. citizen faster than we could run to stay ahead of the incoming tide at Cornwall, England.
Sadly, under President Biden this tide ran out, even resulting in inflation increasing 8.5% with more to come based on the producer price rising 11.1%. Why? Because a “lid” was put on exploration for oil and gas, and for U.S. pipelines, but not for Russian pipelines. Compounding the problem in Europe was former Chancellor Angela Merkel making Germany dependent on importing liquefied natural gas from the U.S.
Since the Biden team cut them off, Europe has paid Russia $38 billion for energy.
Southern border policies — which would have enabled the wall to be completed to prevent the intrusion of millions of unvetted, unvaccinated, border crossers roaming the country and some of the 41,587 fentanyl deaths of 18–45-year-olds in 2021 — were terminated.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan, pursuant to President Trump’s plan, would have been orderly and may have prevented the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
The reality is the tide of voters for Mr. Biden is ebbing below 30% among independents. However, we are faced with 8.5% inflation for U.S. consumers, communities receiving two million-plus immigrants and the horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Is there any hope?
Any hope may lie in the outcomes of two current events.
One is the Biden economy causing AT&T’s profits to “flow out to sea” and its stock to drop 40% from $38.38 to $23.38, causing on Feb. 4 the cutting of its dividend in half.
AT&T owns Warner Media LLC, which owns CNN. CNN flourished by putting a “lid” on stories about the FBI sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop while publicizing stories from false leaks supposedly from the Mueller investigation as told by the more than 100 appearances by attorney Michael Avenatti, who is now in prison for fraud, or disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo before he was kicked out of office or Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Recent polls indicate that 40% of Biden voters would not have voted for the president if they knew about his son’s laptop.
AT&T’s CEO John Stankey decided to put a “lid” on the losses of CNN after CNN+, the CNN streaming service, fell short of its self-projected 2 million subscribers by getting only 10,000.
Mr. Stankey directed CEO Jason Kilar of Warner Media LLC, the parent company of CNN, to “put a lid” on CNN CEO Jeffrey Zucker’s career at CNN before AT&T “put a lid” on its losses by “merging” Warner Media LLC with Discovery. “Merging” is in quotations because the company will be run by Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who promised a shift from CNN being “leader of news to the left” to broadcasting the actual news.
Nevertheless, the question remains: Did CNN under Mr. Zucker influence the election?
A second current event involves Twitter who, like CNN, contributed to the incoming Biden tide by “putting a lid” on Hunter’s — and the Biden family’s — business dealings with Ukraine, Russia and China.
Subsequently, Twitter stock dived with the Biden economy from $73.34 to $40 while the company silenced Republicans, including President Trump, by putting “lids” on their Twitter accounts even as the “insurrection” charges from Jan. 6 faded into mere “trespassing” ones.
Elon Musk’s taking time from his opening new Tesla pants in Germany and Austin, Texas, to say Twitter’s “failing to adhere to free speech principle” and “fundamentally undermined democracy,” followed by his becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder, spiked its stock to $50 before settling at $46.23.
The day after Mr. Musk had a wide-ranging discussion with Twitter employees, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal gave the employees a day off to handle their stress. Stress? How stressful can it be to only decide who to eliminate because you disagree with their views?
I would have counseled Mr. Musk to reject the Twitter board’s offer to join the directors because of how difficult it is for me to streamline meetings even for my small board. But Mr. Musk accepted before he later realized his mistake and declined.
His intent to change Twitter caused the Democrats to shift from Mr. Musk being a hero for founding the electric vehicle maker Tesla to encouraging the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate him.
Of course, the White House had already excluded Mr. Musk from meetings on EVs because he does not favor unions.
The Twitter board enacted a “poison pill” that penalizes any takeover candidates it doesn’t support, like Mr. Musk, but not those it supports.
The future of free speech in the media will be impacted by whether Mr. Musk has the ways, means and desire to fight through the Twitter board’s resistance.
Don Quixote’s handlers saw his tide of adventure ebbing, an opportunity to profit from “Don Quixote attacking the windmills of his mind” with a tournament at Saragossa before putting a “lid” on him and his assistant Sancho by sending them to deal with their destructive past. A “lid” on presidential activities for 2021 would have eliminated the destructions in energy, inflation, immigration and Afghanistan, as well as prevented the impact of his policies on companies, such as AT&T and Twitter.
What will happen to this president and vice president when the rising tide that swept them in continues to ebb and, to quote Warren Buffet, “we will see who does not have a bathing suit on?” Brent E. Zepke is an attorney, arbitrator and author who lives in Santa Barbara. Formerly he taught at six universities and numerous professional conferences. He is the author of six books: “One Heart-Two Lives,” “Legal Guide to Human Resources,” “Business Statistics,” “Labor Law,” “Products and the Consumer” and “Law for Non-Lawyers.”
