JIM GERAGHTY: We’re Already Talking about Joe Biden in the Past Tense.
You knew that Joe Biden was in rough shape. We predicted that after Biden left office someone like Bob Woodward or Robert Costa would reveal in some book, something along the lines of, “The president’s official health report said he was in fine shape for his age. But behind the scenes, Jill Biden, Ron Klain, and Susan Rice were deeply concerned the president’s health was rapidly declining, and that he would soon be unable to perform his duties.”
But the exposés didn’t even wait for Biden to leave office. And it’s easy to see Thursday morning’s 3,800 word report in the Wall Street Journal as just another edition of “Joe Biden was senile, and his staff tried to hide it.”
But it’s the details that really illuminate how, as Jeff Blehar wrote in one of his two blisteringly hot essays about this, “For four years, we have had a ghost as a president.”
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I’ve given Chris Cillizza a lot of grief over his 2021 CNN article that accused me and other Republicans of trafficking in the “gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life” for daring to suggest that, as I put it, “something is wrong with the president,” demonstrated by Biden’s extremely limited appearances in public during the Afghanistan-withdrawal crisis.
In the meanest thing I can possibly do to Cillizza, I am going to quote him at length, from his explanation posted online on Thursday:
Not coincidentally, we’re already talking about the media that propped up the (p)resident in the past tense as well: 60 Minutes Reporter Who Told Trump Hunter’s Laptop Can’t Be Verified Afraid Her Industry Might Be Dead.
Like Biden, if only they hadn’t been napping for the past four years:
UPDATE: Scarborough’s gaslighting about Biden in March looks particularly horrific in light of Thursday’s Wall Street Journal article:
Is he slower? Does he move slower? Yeah, he moves slower. Is he stiffer? Yeah, he moves stiffer. Does he have trouble walking sometimes? Yeah, so did FDR. We get out of the Depression, we won a G.D. war against, against Nazism and, and, and against the Japanese.
But comparing that guy’s mental state — I’ve said it for years now: he’s cogent. But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he’s better than he’s ever been intellectually, analytically. Because he’s been around for 50 years and, you know, I don’t know if people know this or not, Biden used to be a hot head. Sometimes that Irishman would get in front of the reasoning. Sometimes he would say things he didn’t want to say. This is — and, and, I don’t — you know what? I don’t really care.
Start your tape right now, because I’m about to tell you the truth. And f-you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.
—“Joe Scarborough: ‘F-You’ If You Don’t Believe This Is The Best Biden Ever,” Mark Finkelstein, NewsBusters, March 6th, 2024.
Related: Sleepy Biden forced grieving military families to wait hours — while he napped on Air Force One.