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<\/a><\/p>\nHave we had a functional president over the last few years?\u00a0 Do we have one now?\u00a0 Or has the Executive Branch been led by an unelected committee that has conspired to keep the ailing Joe Biden hidden\u2013not only from the public but from the rest of the government\u2013while they ran the show?<\/p>\n
These are the disturbing questions that are emerging after President Biden\u2019s re-election bid came to an end.\u00a0 \u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em> has run an investigative piece entitled How the Bet on an 81-Year-Old Joe Biden Turned Into an Epic Miscalculation<\/a>.<\/p>\n The five reporters who worked on the story (which is behind a paywall) interviewed some 50 administration officials, staffers, lawmakers, and other insiders.\u00a0 Even though the general public has long been concerned with President Biden\u2019s age and Republicans have been hammering him over his \u201csenior moments,\u201d most of those interviewed were genuinely surprised to see Biden come unravelled during the debate.\u00a0 This is because Biden had been essentially hidden away from his own government.<\/p>\n The report begins with an account of President Biden presenting his case for the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill to the House Democratic Caucus.\u00a0 He spoke disjointedly for half an hour, never getting around to asking the lawmakers to vote for the bill.\u00a0 So after he was finished, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, obviously frustrated, took the microphone and told the Congressmen she would explain what the president was trying to say.\u00a0 That was the last time the president spoke to the Democratic Caucus. That was in 2021, three years ago!<\/p>\n We also learn that Biden hardly ever met with his Cabinet members, much less held meetings of the entire Cabinet.\u00a0 Senior members of the White House staff took care of all of that, we are told, with one official admitting that the president was not engaged in the \u201chands-on business of governing.\u201d<\/p>\n All the while, those Senior members of the White House staff came down hard on any Democrat who expressed any questions or raised any doubts about Biden\u2019s condition.\u00a0 They insisted on how sharp Biden was.\u00a0 To say otherwise, they said, was to play in the hands of the Republicans.<\/p>\n Some Democrats did want a genuine primary contest, with alternative candidates competing with Biden for the presidential bid.\u00a0 But top party operatives crushed that attempt and manipulated the process\u2013by making South Carolina the first primary, state parties only allowing Biden on the ballot, and threatening to blackball anyone who worked for another candidate\u2013 so that running against him was impossible.<\/p>\n When Special Council Robert Hur, investigating Biden\u2019s handling of classified documents after he left office as Vice President, refused to press charges because he was \u201celderly man with a poor memory,\u201d with \u201cdiminished faculties in advancing age,\u201d he was excoriated by White House operatives.\u00a0 But, according to the story, \u201cOutside of Biden\u2019s core staff and family, he was the only person to the public\u2019s knowledge who had spent such an extended period interviewing the president, spending five hours over two days in October asking Biden detailed questions.\u201d\u00a0 No one else had been allowed to spend as much time with him!<\/p>\n Even after the debate debacle, as Biden\u2019s decline was impossible to deny and as more and more accounts of his problems were coming out (such as introducing Ukrainian president Zelensky as \u201cPresident Putin\u201d and referring to \u201cVice President Trump\u201d), his handlers continued to insist upon his great abilities.\u00a0 They did so right up to time of the announcement of his withdrawal.\u00a0 Even that, I would add, kept Biden out of sight, breaking the news in a social media post<\/em> rather than a televised announcement (as LBJ did) or a press conference.<\/p>\n The story describes a pattern of rationalization and denial:<\/p>\n [Some] say they realize now that they had simply been looking the other way. One longtime donor recalled that on the last three occasions he saw the president, Biden had repeatedly lost his train of thought and interrupted his sentence with \u201cwhatever.\u201d The donor didn\u2019t think much of it at the time. \u201cI was probably rationalizing,\u201d he said. \u201cSubconsciously, you\u2019re like\u2014OK, I don\u2019t think I can deal with this reality. What choice do I have? Nobody else is running.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A Democratic member of the House of Representatives now says this:<\/p>\n \u201cI am really concerned about what we were not told during these months,\u201d said Rep.\u00a0Lloyd Doggett\u00a0(D., Texas) in an interview. \u201cI remain concerned about that\u2014that for whatever reasons, this overprotective, stage-managed kind of operation not only appears to have denied the American people broadly of an understanding of the president\u2019s current situation, but also other elected officials.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A \u201cstage-managed kind of operation\u201d!\u00a0 I can understand a loyal staff being \u201coverprotective.\u201d But we live in a democracy, as the Democrats keep telling us, something they say Trump is threatening and that they are vowing to save.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to learn what decisions Biden\u2019s unelected handlers made for him.\u00a0 And the nature of the lies they told to hide what they were doing.<\/p>\n But what could have been done?\u00a0 This is what the 25th Amendment<\/a> of the Constitution was crafted to deal with, the eventuality that \u201cthe President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.\u201d\u00a0 But short of that, those in charge should have at least discouraged President Biden from running for re-election\u2013as they have finally done just weeks before the convention\u2013 instead of quashing the very idea.<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal<\/em> article describes what happened as \u201can epic, yearslong miscalculation,\u201d\u00a0 \u201ca story of allies eager to look the other way, Biden advisers who worked to stamp out doubts about his vigor and a party apparatus that boxed out alternative candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n Charles C. W. Cooke<\/a> calls it something else:\u00a0 \u201cThis was a\u00a0conspiracy<\/em>, perpetrated by the White House against the public, some parts of the press, the broader Democratic Party, and Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Photo: President Biden Makes Infrastructure Announcement<\/a> by Marc A. Hermann \/ MTA \u00a0via Flickr,\u00a0 CC by 2.0<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have we had a functional president over the last few years?\u00a0Or has the Executive Branch been led by an unelected committee that has conspired to keep the ailing Joe Biden hidden–not only from the public but from the rest of the government–while they ran the show? A Wall Street Journal investigation describes a conspiracy to hide an incapacitated president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":75552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,36],"tags":[12691,14973,14970,14895,10446],"class_list":["post-75537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-politics","tag-2024-presidential-campaign","tag-bidens-staff","tag-bidens-withdrawal","tag-president-bidens-incapacity","tag-president-joe-biden"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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