China Gets Biden
Meet Thomas Donilon, the China hand behind Joe Biden's nonchalance toward Beijing.
By Lloyd Billingsley
January 14, 2021
Joe Biden may be gearing up for January 20, but it was January 2012 when the Delaware Democrat got his big break. “Biden Gets China,†headlined the January 2, 2012 report in The Atlantic. As author Steve Clemons explained, “a senior White House official has confirmed that Vice President Joe Biden will take the lead on the administration’s next phase China policy.â€
The “strategy of engagement with Biden at the top†was orchestrated by National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, once described by James Mann in Foreign Policy as “Obama’s Gray Man,†who shuns the press and “prefers to operate behind closed doors.â€
According to AllGov.com, Donilon worked in the Jimmy Carter White House and in 1984 served as campaign coordinator for Walter Mondale. In 1985, the University of Virginia law grad landed a spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee but “remained interested in helping get Democrats elected to the White House.†After advising Biden in 1988, Donilon would go on to serve in Bill Clinton’s State Department.
From 1995 to 2005, Donilon was chief lobbyist of the Federal National Mortgage Association. As CNN reported, Donilon left Fannie Mae before it imploded and “was forced to pay $400 million to the federal government for misstated earnings during his time there.†Donilon also attempted to interfere with an audit by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and tried to launch a separate investigation into the OFHEO itself. Such corruption proved no bar to future advancement.
In 2010, President Obama tapped Donilon as his national security advisor, which troubled Robert Scheer of The Nation. “Why in the world would President Obama, whose legacy has been sabotaged by a housing crisis that Donilon helped create and conceal, have hired him to run the most sensitive position of public trust in his administration?†Donilon was a skilled political player, Scheer wrote, but as the president so often demonstrated, “it’s the top hustlers of whom he seems enamored.â€
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https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/14/china-gets-biden/
