Joe Biden struggled to remember basic words or even stand up at campaign fundraisers over a year prior to dropping out of the presidential race, with witnesses describing him as “frighteningly awful and a “senile grandfather” Bob Woodward’s bombshell book “War” reveals.
At a Silicon Valley fundraiser in September 2023 guests were extremely concerned by Biden’s appearance as the then-presidential candidate struggled to remain upright and only took two pre-arranged questions.
“He could not wait to sit down,” a donor at the event, hosted by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, recounted.
Despite bringing a stack of note cards with pre-written answers, the 81-year-old president struggled to stay on point and frequently meandered in his speech, attendees claimed.
Attendees said “[He was] like your 87-year-old senile grandfather,” and called him “frighteningly awful.”
At a different event at the New York City Four Season in June 2023, Biden could not recall the word for “veteran,” and pleaded with the crowd for help describing a person who has “served in the military,” Woodward writes.
But what did the vice president know, and when did she know it?
Retiring President Biden stunned listeners Tuesday by calling for his predecessor Donald Trump to be jailed — 14 days before the presidential election in which Trump is the Republican nominee.
“If I said this 5 years ago, you’d lock me up: we gotta lock him up,” Biden, 81, said during a visit to a Democratic campaign office in New Hampshire.
After a four-second pause during which his audience enthusiastically applauded, Biden added: “politically lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
The president and his aides typically refrain from commenting on the four pending criminal cases against Trump, who contends that a quartet of local and federal indictments last year were politically motivated to aid Biden’s then-re-election campaign.
Biden has tauntingly referenced Trump’s legal woes before, including saying last week, “I think he’s running to stay out of jail.”
All the best people told me during Trump’s first term that wanting to lock your political opponents up is the stuff of fascism:
By trying to have Mrs. Clinton prosecuted, Mr. Trump was following through on a campaign promise. At rallies, he often stood on stage denouncing her as crowds chanted, “Lock her up!”
“This reeks of a typical practice in authoritarian regimes where whoever attains power, they don’t just take over power peacefully, but they punish and jail their opponents,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University.
I eagerly await equally strong condemnations of Biden’s rhetoric as well. (But I won’t be holding my breath in the meantime.)
Simultaneously, I’m eagerly awaiting discussions about the 25th Amendment:
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden inadvertently writes the epitaph for his administration:
Reporter: “What do the states in the storm zone need — after what you saw today?”
Biden: “Oh, storm zone? I didn’t know which storm you’re talking about"
Joe Biden spoke at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in what is likely his last big world speech to close out his 50 years in political life.
Unfortunately, he’s going out after having left the country in shambles. He’s leaving because he was shoved off his reelection bid by his own party, who knew he was going to lose.
His condition was much in evidence as he spoke, despite the fact that he had a teleprompter.
A handler even had to indicate to him where the podium was that he was supposed to speak from.
He was slurring up a storm and you could see how heavily he was relying on the teleprompter. And he seemed to be getting even older even as he detailed some of the things that had happened over those 50 years.
He claimed that we brought Osama bin Laden “justice.” But he had been against taking bin Laden out at the time, even as he now appeared to be trying to take credit for it.
He spoke about the decision to pull out of Afghanistan and said it was the right decision, but he took no responsibility for the botched way in which he conducted the withdrawal, which led to the death of 13 Americans.
Biden lost his temper during a press conference, seeming to snap at staffers because he did not know which world leader he was supposed to be introducing next.
The US president appeared on stage with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia on Saturday as part of a two-day summit of their Quad alliance.
“By the way, he’s from a small country like ours. A small population like ours,” Mr Biden then said while embracing Mr Modi, 74. “He’s become a good and decent man. A good friend.”
“He’s become a good decent man?” I’d say Biden’s declining mental acuity may be playing some role here.
🥴 ‘Who’s next?’ asks a confused Biden at a Quad press conference
“And now, who am I introducing next? Who's next?” the US President barked to the assembled crowd, apparently forgetting the order of speakers at the event. Biden was quickly interrupted by a member of his staff,… pic.twitter.com/GqRF6bKtnT
Biden malfunctions again, says- "He's from a small country like ours, with a small population" "But he's become a good & decent man and a good friend" Even PM Modi is embarrassed!#ModiBidenpic.twitter.com/nR1nFhOphN
President Joe Biden bluntly said he’s ‘doing 9/11‘ tomorrow in a head-scratching comment to reporters who asked his plans ahead of the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
The gaffe-prone 81-year-old was heading to Marine One on the White House lawn when he made the comments just one day before the 23rd anniversary of the terror attacks.
‘I’m going up to my granddaughters birthday in New York,’ Biden began. ‘Then we’re gonna watch the debate, then tomorrow doing 9/11.’
The president’s remark concerning the September 11 attacks on America caused social media users to express shock and amusement at his poor choice of wording.
As with Springfield’s cats, the potential for memes are endless, including:
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
Biden: "28 out of every high school students is Latino, we better start figuring it out." pic.twitter.com/Xdp9YjWryu
President Biden on Monday declared House Speaker Mike Johnson “dead on arrival” when asked how he planned to get his new rules for the Supreme Court through a Republican-run Congress.
Shortly after arriving in Austin, Texas, where Mr. Biden is scheduled to speak about his plan to overhaul the court, he took a few questions when the odd exchange took place.
Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said on social media Mr. Biden’s proposed reforms would be “dead on arrival” in the House.
When asked about the speaker’s comments, Mr. Biden responded, “That’s what he is.”
The confused reporter, seeking clarification, said, “He is?”
“He is dead on arrival,” Mr. Biden responded.
Of course, the DNC-MSM would have be pulling all of the fire alarms if President Trump said that, but as usual with the (p)resident, what James Lileks once accurately dubbed “the soft bigotry of Joe expectations” strikes again.
Biden’s defiant remarks were a far cry from the call for national unity the octogenarian leader issued in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday. “We must not go down this road in America. The political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated,” Biden said. “It’s time to cool it down.” His comments in the wake of Saturday’s shooting prompted mainstream outlets such as Politico to call Biden the nation’s “unifier in chief.”
In his interview with Holt, however, Biden embraced such “heated” rhetoric. In addition to his assertion that Trump is a “threat to democracy,” Biden veered off into a diatribe about the “viciousness” of rural Trump supporters after Holt asked him whether Saturday’s assassination attempt will alter the trajectory of the presidential election.
“I’ve never seen circumstances where you ride through certain rural areas of the country, and people have signs they’re standing—big Trump signs with a middle—sign that says ‘F Biden’ and a little kid standing there putting up his middle finger,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s the kind of stuff that’s just inflammatory and a kind of viciousness. It’s a very different thing to say, ‘Look, I really disagree with Trump’s—the way he takes care of taxes.’”
As former President DONALD TRUMP’s trial opened Monday in New York City, NYT’s MAGGIE HABERMAN posted an update from the courtroom: “Trump appears to be sleeping. His head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack.”
The post, which immediately went viral on X and was almost instantly the talk of cable news panels, shot around Biden world in emails and text messages between White House, campaign aides and other Democrats close to the administration.
“Hitler Pig sleepy,” one individual said on one thread as a caption to Haberman’s post.
You read that right: “Hitler Pig.”
That moniker, four people in Biden’s orbit told West Wing Playbook, is one that aides to and allies of the president — generally younger, more digitally native individuals, not senior staffers, one person clarified — frequently use to describe Trump.
—The Politico, April 17th.
This morning, Biden senior advisor TJ Ducklo wasn’t happy about how his boss’s latest interaction with a party operative with a Chyron turned out:
This despite Holt doing all he can to cover for Biden’s gaffes:
Thing is that Lester Holt actively tried to help Biden throughout that interview and it still did not come off great.
Ex: When Biden called the Secret Service Director a him, Holt corrected it to “her” in the follow up instead of asking if he even knew who the Director was… pic.twitter.com/sefyyuRC5b
During @JoeBiden’s call with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the president said his staff passed him a note to “stay positive you are sounding defensive.” Biden read the note aloud to participants on the call.
George H. W. Bush, Romney-like in aloofness, was once famously handed a staff cue card that read: “Message: I care.” That was supposed to be speech guidance. Bush read the card. Out loud.
Not surprisingly, he lost to Bill Clinton, a man who lives to care, who feels your pain better than you do — or at least makes you think so. In politics, that’s a trivial distinction.
Watching George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 1992, there were many moments where it seemed like Papa Bush was just phoning it in; that he didn’t even want to be out on the hustings, let alone win a second term as president. But that failed reelection bid was a well-oiled machine compared to where the (p)resident is at today. Or as Ed Morrissey writes: ‘It’s Over’: Dem Panic Over 2024 Curdles Into Despair.
Left unsaid: It might get worse if they try to replace Biden, too. He all but endorsed Kamala Harris at the press conference on Thursday as his successor, and Democrats know all too well that she’d be a disaster as the nominee. A three-week campaign among convention delegates would be just enough time to rip open the rifts between factions within the party and not nearly enough time to heal them in the race for power. Like it or not, Biden’s the only available-if-imperfect figure of unity in this cycle.
The time to have that debate was during the primaries, but … Democrats thought they could gaslight voters and avoid it. FAFO. And so …
Inside the Capitol, Democrats who fear Biden can’t win make up a majority of the party and a growing number are willing to say so publicly.
“It’s over,” one aide to a battleground Democrat said of the fight to flip the House. “It doesn’t matter if they’re outperforming him by 35 fucking points. The math doesn’t work.”
The jig is up, that’s for sure. But if Biden refuses to leave, expect the gaslighting to resume, this time as a comeback narrative that will last until the next aphasiac performance or “President Putin” gaffe. Just don’t expect voters to buy it.
Still though, think of the upside after Biden’s latest Ron Burgandy-esque moment!
All Kamala has to do is slip Joe a note during a call that says “I am resigning” and after he reads it aloud the job is hers https://t.co/a8uNehH3Ye
The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.
But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.
We’ve entered some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Russell Brand is a voice of sanity:
We're 17 minutes in, and Joe Biden is discussing the problem of people being raped by their brothers and sisters, which is quite an extraordinary yet niche topic to discuss. pic.twitter.com/6DEWv0xwiH
“I think that the thing, Katty, that worries them, is that the information environment is what it is,” [John] Heilemann told MSNBC contributor Katty Kay. “And so I asked [O’Malley Dillon] to kind of try to make the case for, you know we see surrogates all the time go on TV and say, ‘I was in a meeting with Joe Biden recently and he seemed great.’ And I said, ‘Look, most of those people have been at one meeting with Joe Biden or a couple. You spend more time with him or as much time with him as anybody in the White House over the course of the last three years. How do you make the case that Biden is, give me a vivid reason to believe that for those who say Joe Biden is not up to the job?’”
“And she told a great story … emotional, powerful, vivid, but it’s a four or five-minute long story,” he added. “And in this information environment … the voters they have to reach are people who don’t hear the five-minute story. They’re never going to see Joe Biden that way. What they’re going to see is deep fakes, cheap fakes and not fakes, but images, quick images that leave a certain impression. And trying to reach people in this environment is really hard, reach anyone in the environment we live in now in the information ecosystem.”
The Biden and Trump campaigns have put the finishing touches on their debate on June 27th. We already knew that Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would moderate. Now the two sides have agreed to several ground rules.
There will be two commercial breaks instead of one. No interaction with campaign staff will be allowed. Will they allow a bathroom break?
Mics will be muted when it’s not the candidate’s turn.
“Both candidates agreed to appear at a uniform podium, and their podium positions will be determined by a coin flip,” according to CNN.
No audience will be present.
No opening statements.
The moderators “will use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion,” according to the network. That means no talking over the other guy.
As Rick Moran writes, “With the inability to interrupt the other, there probably won’t be a lot of fireworks. But given how much they hate each other, you have to wonder if they’re even going to shake hands before the debate. Other than that, I’m going to be watching the expressions on both their faces. Daggers and arrows, man. Daggers and arrows.”
Biden looked to be having a frozen episode. He looked a lot like Mitch McConnell did when he froze during a press conference. At the time, McConnell’s people said it was likely a part of the process as his brain recovered from a bad fall he took. He hit his head when he fell and was hospitalized.
When McConnell froze, he stood motionless with a blank stare on his face. Biden had the same look on his face. McConnell had a second frozen moment during an event in Kentucky. After the second episode, McConnell announced he was stepping down as Senate minority leader and would not seek re-election. He was 81, the same age as Biden.
Where was Jilly from Philly? Kamala’s husband was there with her. They were clapping and swaying to the music next to Biden on the front row.
This comes at an awkward time. Last week the Wall Street Journal ran a tough piece about Biden’s loss of mental acuity. 45 people were interviewed, both Democrats and Republicans. Most of the Democrats spoke anonymously. It was notable, though, that they were speaking about Biden’s condition at all. Most are silent or defensive when asked about Biden’s ability to do the job, given his advanced age and obvious decline.
Biden’s unusually intense reliance on his wife as a cognitive enhancement and an image protector is as inarguable as it is provocative. According to an NBC News profile, she is known in the White House as “the Decider,” and she wields “unparalleled influence.” “She is,” the profile continues, “her husband’s foremost defender. She guards his interests and dignity….Her input is essential in some of the weightiest political and personnel decisions the 46th president confronts.” She is to Biden what the left used to claim Dick Cheney was to George W. Bush, i.e., the power behind the throne.
All of this has drawn comparisons between Jill Biden and another uniquely powerful First Lady, Edith Wilson.
Some historians consider Edith Wilson the nation’s “first woman president”—and not without cause. When her husband, the execrable Woodrow Wilson, suffered a debilitating stroke on October 2, 1919, Mrs. Wilson essentially took over running the White House and, by extension, the entire executive branch. She screened all government business brought to the Oval Office. She handled all serious matters. Because he was left unable to write his name, she forged his signature on official documents. Most notably, Edith Wilson guarded her husband’s “interests and dignity” by keeping his infirmity secret from the public. As William Hazelgrove noted in his 2016 biography of her, Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson, “her Oval Office authority was acknowledged in Washington circles at the time—one senator called her “the presidentress who had fulfilled the dream of suffragettes by changing her title from First Lady to Acting First Man.”
The biggest difference between Edith Wilson and Jill Biden is that Wilson got away with it. While Jill Biden is front-and-center in her husband’s public life at all times, earning the admiration of his supporters and drawing the ire of his opponents, Edith Wilson worked effectively and quietly behind the scenes. Through quiet diligence and discretion, she was able to convince those outside of Washington that all was well in the White House and that her husband was still in charge. His stroke occurred more than 17 months before Warren G. Harding was inaugurated on March 4, 1921. That’s more than 35% of his second term and nearly one-fifth of his entire presidency.
Edith Wilson was able to keep this secret and succeed where Jill Biden has failed, not because she was especially crafty or exceptionally dishonest (although she was both) but because the president was not, at the time, the most important person in the world. The government was small enough and the presidency unimportant enough that no one missed Woodrow Wilson in the slightest. No one outside of Washington noticed or cared that he wasn’t around. No one needed him to fix their problems, right their wrongs or deliver retribution upon their enemies. No one needed him to be the cause of all economic activity or the source of the nation’s self-image. He wasn’t the “empathizer in chief” or a powerful father-like figure. He was a just a guy, albeit a guy with an important job, but not one that was so important that it completely preoccupied everyone’s waking hours. Celebrities didn’t obsess about the man or deliver foul-mouthed press conferences declaring that the world’s fate depended on his reelection. No one cared—and nor should they have.
I’m not sure about that last part, given Wilson’s role in creating the modern American state:
In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was the newly elected president. Wilson and his fellow progressives scorned the Constitution and the Declaration. They moved swiftly to replace the Founders’ republic with a new regime.
There is widespread agreement that Wilson did not always show good judgment – for example, in his blunders in international relations – but in the project of overturning the Founding, he and the movement he led selected their targets shrewdly. By the time he left office, the American republic was, as they say, history. The fundamentals of the new regime were in place, and the expansion of government under FDR, LBJ, and Obama was made easy, perhaps even inevitable.
Nineteen-thirteen gave us the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution. That year also saw the creation of the Federal Reserve. This burst of changes marks the effective beginning of the Progressive Era in American politics, the era in which we now live. Wilson was to do much more that would once have been considered out of bounds, but these three changes were enough to change everything. In 1913, the fundamental agreement the Founders made with the American people about the relation of the states and the federal government was broken.
I’m thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.
Oh, and I’m not thinking of George W. Bush, but another “W” – actually “WW”: Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.
President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, and the only political scientist to occupy the Oval Office. He was the champion of “self determination” and the author of the idealistic but doomed “Fourteen Points” – his vision of peace for Europe and his hope for a League of Nations. But the nature of his presidency has largely been forgotten.
That’s a shame, because Wilson’s two terms in office provide the clearest historical window into the soul of progressivism. Wilson’s racism, his ideological rigidity, and his antipathy toward the Constitution were all products of the progressive worldview.
As with the moral revolution of 2020, the hangover that followed was enormous for the American left. In his 2014 book, The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class, Fred Siegel wrote that in order to put a fresh PR spin on their ideology after the horrors of the Wilson administration, the self-described “Progressives” of the 20th century’s early years began to call themselves “liberals” instead — a huge stolen base, considering that there’s a vast difference between the traditional laissez-faire meaning of classical liberalism and the racism, eugenics, and “moral equivalent of war” obsessions of “Progressivism.”
President Biden was spotted awkwardly fumbling for his seat as other dignitaries remained standing during a poignant D-Day commemoration ceremony in France on Thursday.
The 81-year-old could be seen grasping for his chair in the middle of the stage — despite his wife, first lady Jill Biden, and French President Emmanuel Macron remaining upright beside him.
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