If you didn't know any better, you might assume that White House PR flacks were composing the gushy copy in the local paper after his belated brief visit to Maui on Monday. Instead this adoration of Biden came from reporter Dan Nakaso in Tuesday's Honolulu Star Advertiser. The kisses to Biden start with this story title, "President Biden sends message of support, hope after touring Lahaina."
In fact despite the wide resentment of Biden by Maui residents reported by many other sources, the only hint of negativity in Nakaso's Biden love note came in just one sentence which portrayed those protesting Biden as an unfairly angry fringe group:
As his motorcade exited Kapalua Airport and turned onto Honoapiilani Highway for Lahaina, a group of protesters shouted profanities, flashed their middle fingers and waved signs reading “Maui Strong” and “Trump won.”
Other than that brief lapse into negativity, Nakaso was all in on hyping how beloved Biden was in Maui. Here are a few saccharine examples:
Biden — during his visit to historic Lahaina town and later before a gathering of an estimated 350 people at the Lahaina Civic Center — twice invoked the memory of his onetime mentor, Hawaii’s late and beloved U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye.
Of course, Nakaso left off the part of Biden's Inouye tribute in which he insulted the memory of the Hawaiian born and bred senator by incorrectly asserting that he "came from Japan." Then there's the kitchen-fire story:
Biden told a story of a fire at his home in Delaware and said, “God made man, and then he made a few firefighters. You’re all crazy, thank God. The only people who run into flames to help other people. And they ran into flames to save my wife and save my family. Not a joke.”
Left out of Nakaso's account of Biden's Delaware kitchen fire was that very brief, and not life-threatening. He told the people of Maui, many of whom lost homes and loved ones, that he empathized with them because he almost lost his Corvette and cat due to that brief kitchen fire.
Nakaso concluded by unironically listing Biden's top Maui hits (and of course NONE of his many misses):
“What I’ve observed in my short time here today is the courage, the community, the sense of togetherness you have. It’s not an ordinary community. It’s a community based on faith in one another. I’ve watched. I’ve had an opportunity to get to know your governor; I know your senators, know your folks. What they said about who you are is true. It’s true and it matters.”
>> “There’s as an Irish poet who wrote a poem called ‘The Cure at Troy.’ There’s a stanza in it that seems to be appropriate: He said, ‘History teaches us not to hope on this side of the grave. But then once in a lifetime, that longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.’
“It’s time it rises up for you all. It’s time to rebuild this community the way you want it built — the way you want it — so it’s still a community, not a group of beautiful homes, but a community.”
>> “Every time I’d walk out of my grandpop’s house — he was an old Irish guy — he’d yell, ‘Joey, keep the faith.’ And my grandmother went, ‘No, Joey, spread it.’ Let’s spread the faith.”
Were those Biden psalms selected by Nakaso or copied from suggestions by the the White House PR team that originally wrote them? Even some left leaning media outlets such as Breaking Points expressed disgust with Biden's Maui performance, yet the Star Advertiser managed to act as a complete flack for Biden.
