All You Have To Do Joe is Nothing, by Scipio

“All you have to do, Mr. President, is do nothing.  Don’t shake hands with anybody on your Middle East trip”, said his puppeteers, “You see we have optics problems based on some policies and stupid things you have said in the past about Saudi Arabia.”

“Now we know you say stupid things to us all the time and often to the public.  Most of the public has a short-term memory or just let it go because it’s you, so they give you a pass every time you insult someone else.”

“For example, you have a bad habit of calling chief executives derogatory names publicly. Remember when Florida Governor DeSantis announced the end of mask mandates in the state of Florida based on ‘real science’ rather than ‘the science’?  You called him a Neanderthal. The Russians are driving us crazy with our sanctions helping rather than hurting them, and you have called their President Putin some bad names publicly. Most biting was calling him, ‘butcher’, ‘war criminal’, thug’, and ‘murderous dictator’ among other things.  BTW that is really not helping our negotiators at the peace table with the Russians over Ukraine where they are beating our butts daily.”

“You are an equal opportunity slanderer also. You don’t limit your venom to just the highest political domestic and foreign figures.  You can give the little guy public insults as well.  Remember that time campaigning in Iowa when you called a portly 83-year-old man who asked a question ‘fat’ and a ‘damn liar’, and incredibly stupid, even by your standards, you challenged him to a sit-down IQ test on the spot!  Thank God the man didn’t take you up on that challenge because you would have made a fool of yourself. Well, I mean a bigger fool of yourself.”

“The real problem we have with this trip to Saudi Arabia is you called, (MBS) Mohammed bin Salman’s country a ‘pariah state’ and one that had ‘no redeeming social value’. That upset the Saudis’ so much that when you sent your brain-dead National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, to meet with MBS September last year, you had him to ask MBS about the who murdered Jamel Khashoggi.  Before the meeting MBS had already publicly stated that he had nothing to do with it. Undeterred, you had to have dumbass Sullivan ask anyway.  We all know what happened, the prince yelled at Sullivan, and said, ‘I never want to discuss the matter again and (the US) could forget about its request to boost oil again’.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right, the light has momentarily come back on in your head. You ask why are we going over there to ask for more oil and what happened to Khashoggi after MSB told us not to?  It’s simple, we are desperate to bring down gas prices.  We have shut down domestic producers, sold our emergency reserves which is supposed to be used for things like war with Russia, just to bring gas prices down for a few days for re-election purposes, and now we have no more options.  You are going there to beg, got it Joe, beg.”

“Now here is the conundrum, there is a lot of political pressure on the Administration to bring up the human rights issue over Khashoggi.  We have a lot of political backers who are stupid about the world economy who still want us to press MBS on this matter. Well, just between you and me, we are not going to.  However, we want to give the impression we are cool toward the Saudis over the issue by not allowing a photo-op of you shaking hands with MBS giving the impression all is well between you two.”

“To get away with not shaking hands, we pulled out our COVID bag of tricks to claim there is a spike in “cases” and with your age demographic we don’t want to risk possible infection.  So, we have prearranged for you to not shake hands with anyone on your trip, not even the Israelis that you will be meeting with before continuing to Arabia.  Since Israel is considered an ally, it will not be perceived as an insult, just a heath issue adaptation.  By the time you get to Saudi Arabia the photo media will already be conditioned to this unorthodox greeting and not ask questions.”

“When you get there go ahead and ask for the more oil, forget about Khashoggi. Blame Putin for your having to come back to him after he already told you not to. Remember, we are desperate. If all else fails, we can throw tacos at them because we already lost their vote anyway. You understand Joe?  Remember all you have to do Joe is nothing.”

Following these instructions, the puppets watched in horror as TV broadcast looping video of Biden vigorously shaking hands with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the first stop on the Mid East tour.