President Biden’s boldest move hasn’t been his policies, but his “unavailability”, says Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times. His first press conference since taking office came later into his term than any president in the past 100 years. Since Bill Clinton, who thought of government as a “permanent campaign”, American presidents have loved hogging the limelight. But Biden “has given voters the time and space to busy themselves with other things”. It might sound superficial, but America needed nothing more urgently this year than to take a breather and cool down.
Post on Facebook and be damned
Annoyed with Poland’s Trumpist president taking his time to acknowledge Joe Biden’s election win, writer Jakub Zulczyk posted on Facebook last November that: “Joe Biden is the 46th president of the United States. Andrzej Duda is a moron.” He’s now been charged for insulting the head of state and could be jailed for three years. “I am, I suspect, the first writer in this country in a very long time to be tried for what he wrote,” Zulczyk said.
Ed’s electric dreams fall flat
Ed Miliband’s plan for an “electric car revolution” hasn’t quite reached his own garage. Asked on Good Morning Britain if he had one himself, the former Labour leader said: “I haven’t yet – it’s a work in progress.” He does at least have an electric bike on the way.
The conspiracy was only a theory
Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer Sidney Powell – who was sacked by the former president for being too conspiratorial – has come up with an intriguing legal defence. She’s facing a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, a company she claimed engaged in mass voter fraud in last year’s presidential election. But her own lawyer is arguing that “no reasonable person” would take Powell’s claims as fact – they were merely an “opinion”.