‘Elderly’ Biden, 81, excused – but woman, 91, is not

By Lt. Col. James Zumwalt

In an outrageous example of progressivism trumping common sense, we are bearing witness to a criminal act, excused because the aged perpetrator allegedly fails to understand today what he did earlier, while an aged perpetrator failing to understand the semantics of a company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy is summarily fired.

While finding evidence that President Joe Biden willfully retained highly classified material, a recent report issued by Special Counsel Robert Hur into their discovery at his home – relocated there after serving as vice president – Hur declined to prosecute him. He claimed the reason for this was that, while being interviewed about the incident, Biden, 81, basically displayed the poor memory of an “elderly man.”

However, Hur fails to note that his investigation also revealed that Biden had classified documents going back to when he was a senator. While an excuse can be made for such documents being found in the home of a president or former president who retains lifetime secret service protection (former vice presidents only receive such protection for six months after leaving office), there is no excuse for a senator transporting such documents from a safe area to his home. Yet Biden was granted a blanket get out of jail card for decades of his transgressions.

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It is disturbing enough that Biden would receive a free pass for criminal acts he committed going back to the 1970s/1980s justified on the basis of his mental state today but even more disturbing that, despite a current failing mental prowess, he should remain in office as president without a bilateral initiative undertaken to remove him in the best interests of the country.

Compare this to what happened to a 90-year-old volunteer in California, Fran Itkoff, who for two-thirds of her life did volunteer work for the National MS Society. In this capacity, she had won numerous awards, including a Volunteer Lifetime Achievement award in 2008.

Bitten by DEI senselessness, the Society mandated that its employees and volunteers use “preferred pronouns” in communicating with people. Itkoff was asked to incorporate her pronouns into her email signature. However, understandably at her advanced age, Itkoff was somewhat confused about the process, explaining, “I didn’t know what it was and what it meant. I had seen it on a couple of letters that had come in after the person’s name. But I didn’t know what that meant.”

When Itkoff queried a colleague about it, she was informed this was an effort to demonstrate inclusiveness for everyone. But she said it still “didn’t make sense to her.” Itkoff then received the following notification from the Society for failing as a volunteer to comply with its DEI policy, “Unfortunately, based on the situation, we have made the difficult decision to have you step down from your volunteer position, effective immediately.”

In a subsequent interview, Itkoff”s daughter, Elle Hamilton, explained her mother’s confusion: “As a 90-year-old, who didn’t know what it [pronouns] meant, she’s not street savvy, to find out what it meant, and when she said that they [pronouns] were required to use it to be inclusive, my mom was saying that we’ve always been. The MS Society, as a whole … has just always been inclusive.”

Hamilton added, “To me, it’s ironic, because they are saying they are inclusive, but they are excluding a 90-year-old disabled woman who has volunteered for 60 years. And literally the sole purpose was to help the MS patients and find a cure. … That’s literally all she does.”

The Itkoff family has a long affiliation with the Society as evidenced by Hamilton’s father who received the National MS Father of the Year award and was flown to Washington to meet then-President Jimmy Carter.

A frustrated Hamilton noted, “It’s sad that they’re discriminating against her [Itkoff]. MS doesn’t discriminate, it can happen to anybody, and yet they’re discriminating against her trying to help just because she asked a question to explain what pronouns were.”

The true irony here is that Biden committed a criminal act, unsurprisingly to benefit himself financially by sharing the materials with a ghostwriter, while Ifkoff’s offense was simply trying to understand a DEI policy that made no sense to her as a senior citizen. Apparently, an innocent violation of a woke corporate policy is more egregious than an intentional violation endangering national security.

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Lt. Col. James Zumwalt

Lt. Col. James G. Zumwalt is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of three books on the Vietnam war, North Korea and Iran as well as hundreds of op-eds. Read more of Lt. Col. James Zumwalt's articles here.


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