David Frum has gone from being a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, to being a cable-news speech adviser for Joe Biden.
Appearing on CNN's New Day on Tuesday morning, Frum advised Biden to stress two things in his SOTU tonight.
First, to use the Ukraine situation to take a swipe at Trump's foreign policy:
"These events have given the absolute lie to the false and idiotic idea of America First, America alone, our allies are worthless, having friends is not important."
That's quite a cartoon of the Trump administration's actual foreign policy and their attempts to press NATO countries to take a more active role in their common defense.
Frum's second suggestion was more nakedly political: try to shift the blame for inflation from Biden to Putin, and accuse any politician who dares mention inflation of hurting Ukraine!
"President Biden needs to bring home that when you as Americans pay more at the pump, when you pay more for food, it was already tight, but the increases that are coming now are Putin's doing. And any politician of any party who tries to make domestic, political hay of the sacrifices that Americans are about to feel, is undermining support for Ukraine."
Nice attempted two-part Democrat spin, David! Take the inflation onus off Biden, and silence critics who hold Biden responsible for inflation.
It's not going to work, because Americans have already suffered enough inflation pain to know who is really responsible. And good luck when it comes to silencing Biden critics. Nobody's going to believe that it is "undermining" Ukraine to hold Biden responsible for his domestic failures.
On CNN's New Day, David Frum advising Biden that in his State of the Union address he should try to switch the blame for inflation from himself to Putin was sponsored in part by T-Mobile, Celebrity Cruises, and Liberty Mutual.
Here's the transcript.
CNN
New Day
3-1-22
7:16 am ETSUSAN PAGE: [Zelenskyy] really rose to the occasion. He was conversational and emotional. He spoke from the heart. He rallied, he spoke to multiple audiences. He was rallying Ukrainians. He was making demands of the European parliament. He was sending a message to Vladimir Putin. And I think that President Biden will need to do all those things tonight in a State of the Uion address that has been transformed, I think in the space of a week or two. This is not the laundry list of legislative priorities that presidents often give at State of the Union addresses. This is going to be a different kind of speech entirely.
BRIANNA KEILAR: It gives an opportunity for him, I think, to frame this in a very big way. And I wonder how you think he's going to do that?
DAVID FRUM: Well, here's what I would advise him to do if I were asked, which I wasn't. That, as Susan said, President Zelenskyy just provided President Biden with the thing that is always lacking from State of the Union speeches, or almost always: a frame. Why am I talking? What am I saying? Do I have a single message?
And there are two things that I think President Biden needs to stress tonight -- I hope he will stress tonight very hard.
The first is, these events have given the absolute lie to the false and idiotic idea of America First, America alone, our allies are worthless, having friends is not important. What we have seen is the power of coordinated action by the United States and its European partners and its British partners, Canadians, Australians and others, to bring down the Russian economy. So I hope he will talk tonight about what we have seen is the proof, the test proof, of the power of alliances, the power of friendship, the power of international cooperation.
The second thing I hope he will do, is to give Americans a warning. One of the reasons Putin struck when he did was that food and energy markets were already so tight. Russia, and Ukraine too, are major suppliers of food and energy. So the prices were high and that gave Putin his opportunity.
And this disaster is going to raise the prices higher. So, President Biden needs to bring home that when you as Americans pay more at the pump, when you pay more for food, it was already tight, but the increases that are coming now are Putin's doing. And any politician of any party who tries to make domestic, political hay of the sacrifices that Americans are about to feel, is undermining support for Ukraine.
KEILAR: Because he has to -- look, these sanctions that the U.S. and western countries have in a unified way embraced, they're also a double-edge sword. They're going to hurt Americans as well at a time when inflation is already high. And he's going to have to make sense of that sacrifice. He can blame it on Russia, but he's going to have to explain to them why they're feeling it.
