I was pretty harsh yesterday, criticizing Scranton Joe’s first day of his European tour, calling it a “clown show.” Not that the legacy media would even hint at that.  But it turns out that I wasn’t critical enough.

It seems that when Biden sought to soothe French President Macron’s anger over stealing away a big submarine-building contract that had Australia spending close to 20 billion dollars on French submarines, he gave no thought to the insult he was delivering to Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It was bad enough that Biden admitted being totally out of the loop on a major deal affecting two close allies. Now, both of them are angered.

But the Aussies noticed. Via a paywalled article in the Courier Mail (of Brisbane):

Scott Morrison maintains the White House was kept in the loop about Australia’s discussions with France before his decision to rip up a $90bn submarine contract sparked a diplomatic rift. (snip)

US President Joe Biden appeared to criticise the Prime Minister when he told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that the AUKUS defence pact was not handled “with a lot of grace” before it was announced last month.

Mr Biden said it was “clumsy” and that he was “under the impression that France had been informed long before that the deal was not going through, honest to God”. (snip)

Asked about Mr Biden’s comments, Mr Morrison said: “I’ll leave his remarks to him.”

The Prime Minister said the submarine switch was “always a difficult decision” but that he did not “recoil from it at all”.

“Australia made the right decision in our interests to ensure we have the right submarine capability,” Mr Morrison said.

Biden meeting with Macron in Rome Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.

Remember when Biden was sold to voters as a foreign policy expert? Well, I admit it does take some kind of expertise to alienate both sides in a major dispute.

Hat tip: John McMahon

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