TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Excruciating moment Biden couldn’t recognize A-list star who’d backed him for years, as top Dems leak grim new details of plot to trick Americans.

So outraged are influential Democrats that a number have allowed their names to be used in the book, including David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s successful 2008 campaign. ‘We got so screwed by Biden as a party,’ Plouffe is quoted as saying.

In one of the most shocking revelations, Biden was reportedly so impaired that he didn’t recognize Clooney at a star-studded June 2024 Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles, the book says, claiming it left the actor ‘shaken to his core.’

‘It was obvious to many standing there that the president did not know who George Clooney was,’ the authors write.

Another Hollywood VIP guest reportedly said: ‘It was like watching someone who was not alive. It was so awful.’

Weeks after that LA fundraiser, and following Biden’s disastrous TV debate against Trump, Clooney wrote a now-infamous op-ed for The New York Times calling for Biden to drop out of the race.

The tactfully-worded article didn’t go into details but Clooney wrote that, in private, the president was, indeed, ‘the same man we all witnessed at the debate.’

* * * * * * * * *

When the White House aides filmed his appearances, they would use more than one camera, allowing ‘jump cuts’ (switching from one view to another) to obscure his stumbles, according to the book.

Original Sin says that from January 1, 2023 to April 27, 2024, the president had undertaken only four public events before 10.00 am.

He had 12 clear weekends with no public events, and, claim the authors, only 12 public events after 6.00 pm most of which were off-camera.

But the president’s issues weren’t a recent development. The authors claim that by 2020, during Biden’s first campaign, he already could no longer follow conversations and a special team was hired to edit his verbal stumbles out of campaign ads.

The authors say he had trouble recording even mundane thoughts without fluffing his lines.

‘Biden often couldn’t make it through one or two minutes without botching a line or two,’ one source says.

Just a reminder that “the authors” here include Jake Tapper, who spent all of Biden’s term defending the president against anyone who pointed out his infirmities.

Today though: Jake Tapper Accuses Biden’s White House Of Lying About Ex-President’s Declining Health.

HOW IT STARTED: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.

—Time Magazine, October 28^th, 2020.

How it’s going: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says.

The discussions reflected the extent of the president’s declining health — particularly the significant degeneration of his spine — and his aides’ alarm over it as Biden sought a second term at age 81.

The conversations also reveal the White House’s determination to conceal the reality of Biden’s condition, at the risk of his own health, while he faced a tough re-election bid against Donald Trump.

• The book is based on interviews with more than 200 people, mostly Democratic insiders, with knowledge of the events that unfolded during the final two years of Biden’s presidency. Almost all of the interviews took place after the 2024 election.

Driving the news: “Biden’s physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn’t do so until after the election,” the authors write.

• Biden aides believed it was politically untenable to have Biden use a wheelchair during his re-election campaign.

• “Given Biden’s age, [his physician Kevin O’Connor] also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery,” the authors report.

—Alex Thompson, Axios, today.

Now it can be told.

UPDATE: America’s Newspaper of Record once again doing straight-up reportage:

No, they really are:

My favorite part of this montage from @tomselliott is Tapper writing off the Wall Street Journal report as "a Murdoch-run paper."

It's just so perfect. https://t.co/BNBg8mcHF0

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 13, 2025

MORE:

WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU? Is the AI boom already over?

Investment bubbles do sometimes involve assets which have little intrinsic value, yet it is remarkable how often they begin as an entirely rational reaction to some new invention or development – an invention which outlasts the collapse of the speculative bubble, as if nothing had happened.

You only have to look at a share chart and you would assume that railways went out of fashion in the 1840s, when a mad speculative umbrella collapsed. See share charts from the early 2000s and you would likewise assume that people took one look at the internet and then swiftly went off it.

Yet the opposite is true. Railways did not just survive railway-mania, but their development accelerated through the 1850s and 1860s to the point that they came to dominate land transport in almost every industrialized country. Their supremacy was only challenged by the development of the internal combustion engine at the very end of the 19th century. Internet usage mushroomed throughout the dotcom collapse. Even tulips survived the mania of 1630s Amsterdam, becoming a popular feature in gardens the world over. This is what makes investment bubbles difficult to spot. Those who get drawn into them are often both very right and very wrong at the same time. They are right that the subject of their affections is, indeed, the future, yet in their enthusiasm they over-estimate the speed at which it will transform the world.

It’s possible to use the Apple iPhone 16 debacle as one sign of AI’s “tulip mania” phase abating. But just as the railroad is still one of the dominant forms of distributing freight across continents, AI is poised to radically reshape our lives. And like trains and the birth of the Internet in 1969 and the World Wide Web in 1989, it could very well be something that becomes taken for granted, rather than something that dominates headlines, as AI did when OpenAI first rolled out ChatGPT in late November of 2022.

IT’S COME TO THIS: David Hogg’s Critique of Democrats: Men Want to Get Laid.

The newsy, clippable bit of Hogg’s interview/discussion with Maher was his diagnosis for why men are fleeing the party, and in particular for why younger men have been leaving in droves after having hewed the line within the party for years: young men want to get laid and have fun, and the Democratic Party has been the party of killjoys.

NEW: David Hogg gets a huge reaction from Bill Maher after saying Democrats need to reconnect with young men who just want to “get laid and have fun” without walking on eggshells.

He said the parties have flipped. Democrats are now the snobs that judge your every move.

“What I… pic.twitter.com/2SyeflzMhA

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 10, 2025

In acknowledging this, he’s not entirely wrong, but neither is he entirely right. The Democrat Party is entirely fine with young men having fun and even getting laid–the party is absolutely obsessed with sex, and only likes freedom in any form if it includes consensual sex between queers or in front of a computer screen.

Who’s behind the pornographic pro-pornography ads being run in swing states on behalf of Kamala Harris? Not some porn actors or other such seedy, fringe folk. It’s a PAC run by an Obama administration alum. And a major funder is Reid Hoffman, co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn. pic.twitter.com/WvRSKv3L60

— Megan Basham (@megbasham) October 27, 2024

Heterosexual sex between women and men, while not strictly forbidden, requires intense negotiations and multiple dangers for men when Democrats get their way.

But Hogg doesn’t seem to get that the problem goes much deeper than Democrats’ focus on promoting a pleasure-based lifestyle for everybody but heterosexual men. It’s that the Democrats hate masculinity per se, and are deeply hostile to the aspirations of men that go far beyond mere sexual pleasure (which men indeed do seek out and love).

If you’re feeling an enormous sense of whiplash at this point, you’re not alone. Prior to Covid and riots, much of Trump’s first term was taken up with headlines and articles and think pieces about what was then called “#MeToo.” Back in October of 2018, I wrote a post that began by quoting a piece by Christopher R. Taylor titled “The New Prudes,” which began:

The people who told us “love the one you’re with” and “if her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal, if her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel” are now telling us that you have to get signed proof for every stage of sexual contact and even if you do, if she regrets it later, it was rape.  The people who created Animal House are now wondering if its even okay to laugh at it.  People routinely say “that could never get made today” about films like Blazing Saddles, but could you even make Pretty in Pink?  Not according to its star Molly Ringwald.

Russ Douthat recently wrote about this odd shift in of all places the New York Times:

The world of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford’s youth, the world that’s given us this fall’s nightmarish escalation of the culture war, was not a traditionalist world as yet unreformed by an enlightened liberalism. It also wasn’t a post-revolutionary world ruled by social liberalism as we know it today. Rather it was a world where a social revolution had ripped through American culture and radically de-moralized society, tearing down the old structures of suburban bourgeois Christian morality, replacing them with libertinism. With “if it feels good, do it” and the Playboy philosophy.

After spending 50 years tearing down everything everyone held dear, mocking morality, breaking apart a system of ethics and behavior, cynically undermining all sense of public etiquette and cultural norms… now we’re being told everything they said to do is all wrong.

Suddenly what pretty much everyone has done in the past is grounds for dismissal and attack.  Went to parties and got drunk?  Now you’re a sinister potential rapist.  Got a diary accounting for where you went and what you did?  Got witnesses?  You might need them now; all it takes is a woman to suddenly remember something she says you did, and a political benefit and you’re doomed.

It’s worth rereading the whole post in light of Hogg’s sudden revelation that his party have become a group of killjoys, including the conservation between John Podhoretz who believed the left’s #Metoo and anti-Kavanaugh tactics were “all situational,” and Jonah Goldberg reminding him that “once you use the neutron bomb, the radiation has an effect long after you use it.” Young Mr. Hogg is apparently only just now discovering how long the fallout lasts from one of his party’s biggest moral panics.

And that he’s not immune from its effects, either:

The BlueSky comments in this are *amazing*. That site is a godsend https://t.co/UEAo2EmBPG pic.twitter.com/QNvUp5hvcj

— Michael Haneke Paneke (@davo_arid) May 12, 2025

Related: The Costs and Consequences of Sexual Liberation. Review: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century by Louise Perry.

UPDATE: Stop the Coup!

OPEN THREAD: Oh, it’s lonely at the bottom. Man, it’s dizzy at the top. But if you’re standing in the middle, ain’t no way you’re gonna stop.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Andor Finally Got Me.

TRUMP ADMIN. SCORES ANOTHER COURT WIN AS FEDERAL JUDGE RULES IRS MAY SHARE ILLEGAL ALIEN DATA WITH DHS.

MODIFIED LIMITED HANGOUT CONTINUES: Chuck Todd Claims Reporters Blindly Believed Sources About Biden’s Mental Frailty.

Chuck Todd basically admitting that reporters blindly believed their sources regarding Joe Biden’s obvious mental frailty is fantastic for three reasons.

First, Todd contradicts what he said ten days ago when he insisted (without evidence) that the regime media did report on Biden’s diminished capacity. Why, just last month he was furious about the suggestion that the media didn’t report on this.

The media “didn’t miss this story,” said an indignant Todd. “David Ignatius wrote a very high-profile column in October of ’23, saying, ‘Is he really running again? This doesn’t seem like a good idea.’ People like me were promoting Dean Phillips’s campaign because [Biden] was running.”

Boy, things sure have changed since Todd spewed that anti-science nonsense. Listen to him today…

🚨NEW: Chuck Todd blames "sources" for reporters' failure to cover Biden's decline🚨

"The real culprits are the people who are supposed to be our sources on all these things, who were constantly reassuring us behind the scenes, 'No, no, no, no, it's better than you think.'"… pic.twitter.com/arnRaEwDOQ

— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) May 11, 2025

“The real culprits are the people who are supposed to be our sources on all these things,” Todd admitted, adding, “who were constantly reassuring us behind the scenes, ‘No, no, no, no, it’s better than you think.’”

But-but-but — I thought the media “didn’t miss this story”?

Chuck Todd worked for the same network that ran this story on June 19th of last year: The deceptive Biden G7 video was quickly debunked, but it kept going viral anyway.

Misleading videos and false claims that President Joe Biden wandered off aimlessly from the G7 conference last week continued to go viral despite debunkings and fact-checks that tried to correct the record.

Google recommended false versions of the story as “top stories.” Deceptive video clips continued to accumulate millions of views on X. Copies of the videos were replayed on TikTok and YouTube with little context. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, applied fact-checking labels to some posts but not to all.

The persistent nature of the misleading videos illustrates how major tech platforms and partisan media are playing off each other in the 2024 election cycle, keeping viral stories in people’s feeds after they’ve been proven to be misleading or even false.

And whose cable host said in March of last year:

“I’ve said it for years now: he’s cogent,” said [Joe] Scarborough on Wednesday. “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 hothead. Sometimes that Irishman would getting in front of the reasoning. Sometimes he would say things he didn’t want to say.”

“Start your tape right now,” he continued, “because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff 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.”

Todd had it slightly closer to the truth when his story in April was: Chuck Todd Says Legacy Media Downplayed Biden’s Issues Due To ‘Fear’ Of Perception Of ‘Helping Trump.’

BUZZ PATTERSON TRIES TO MAKE SENSE OF THE AIR FORCE ONE KERFUFFLE:

As does the Galactic Empire’s Newspaper of Record:

I’m willing to discuss the nefarious nature of Qatar’s government all day long, but this is an out-of-bounds below-the-utility-belt attack on the good guys by the Babylon Bee: The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Time to Punt Thom Tillis.

MISTER WE COULD USE A MAN LIKE SNAKE PLISSKEN AGAIN: Chaos at Newark Airport: Everything You Need to Know.

By May 7, the Federal Aviation Administration pledged to add staff and upgrade equipment. Planned improvements include new high-bandwidth data lines, fiber optic telecom replacements and a temporary backup system for Philadelphia’s TRACON.

The following day, the White House introduced a nationwide overhaul plan. It proposes rebuilding 15 control towers and TRACON centers, constructing six new coordination hubs, and replacing thousands of legacy systems. The initiative, supported by industry stakeholders, awaits congressional approval and has no set cost.

Despite reassurances from federal officials and airline executives, another outage occurred May 9, again knocking out radar visibility for 90 seconds. A third incident followed on May 11, prompting a 45-minute ground stop at EWR.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby defended the safety of flying, citing pilot training and system redundancies. Both acknowledged the urgency of infrastructure reform.

Duffy said the system is operating on outdated technology. He indicated that the challenges facing EWR could soon become relevant at other airports nationwide.

Related: How archaic tech, staff shortages and construction made a meltdown at Newark Airport.

ALLEN WEST: Texas is Being Flipped.

MICHAEL WALSH: American Caesar.

Best of all, the current resurgence of religiosity among young men means the Pope can both catch the wave and steer it. The entirely predictable collapse of “fourth wave” feminism from licentious hedonism to vengeful litigiousness has led to widespread unhappiness among Western women as they finally realize they cannot have it all, that traditional sex (not “gender”) roles are traditional for a very good reason. This will inevitably lead them to follow their men back into something larger and more fulfilling than the empty promises of a cubicle, meaningless sex, zero domestic skills, and the possession of multiple cats which have been on offer since the 1970s.

For all its faults (and I take a deep dive into them in Rage), the Church has survived from its own fraught early history including the break from Judaism and the wrangling over doctrine, to its adoption by empire, to its preservation of Greco-Roman civilization throughout the so-called Dark Ages as modern Europe was forming, to the glories of 18th- and 19th-century European high culture, and hopefully through its post-World War II nadir to emerge more Catholic, and catholic, than ever.

May Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born Cubs fan, polyglot missionary, dual American-Peruvian citizen, and now Leo LIV, pontifex maximus — “bridge builder” — seize the moment. It does us well to remember that that was Julius Caesar’s title as well.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Will Tax Complexity Force Pope Leo To Renounce His U.S. Citizenship?

HAMAS RELEASES LAST LIVING AMERICAN HOSTAGE EDAN ALEXANDER.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Celebrities: Trump Will Destroy the World!

Robert De Niro warns Donald Trump ‘will destroy the world’

Robert De Niro played the “Trump could destroy the world” card prior to Election Day with little to show for it. More recently, George Clooney had to walk Patti LuPone away from the ideological ledge when she wondered if the country could survive a second Trump term.

Clooney, ever the patriot*, told the Broadway star to hold out hope.

Rosie O’Donnell deserves some credit for putting her money where her mouth is when it comes to Trump. She literally left the country, picking a hotbed of antisemtism as her new home – Ireland. The 62-year-old has kept up her anti-Trump rhetoric, warning the president’s tariffs would be “disastrous to the world.”

“Sopranos” alum Joe Pantoliano described the world as “on fire” due to President Trump. He didn’t share specifics, nor did he explain how Trump had anything to do with the Ukraine war, October 7 or academia’s violent upsurge during the Biden years.

From The Matrix’s IMDB trivia page, regarding the character “Cypher,” depicted by Pantoliano:

Agent Smith refers to Cypher as Mr. Reagan during their meeting. This makes him the only character in the movie besides Neo to be identified by both their Matrix identity and their real world “handle” identity.

* * * * * * * *

Along with the many other Christian parallels in this movie, the character Cypher is a reflection of Judas Iscariot in the New Testament. Judas was one of the twelve apostles that Jesus chose to minister in his name, but, in a tragic turn of events, Judas denied his perfect knowledge of the Savior by betraying Him in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. Cypher likewise betrays Morpheus and the entire cause of Zion in exchange for the vanities of the Matrix.

* * * * * * * *

Cypher, whose last name is Reagan, wants to be “important, like an actor,” a wink to President Ronald Reagan. A reference to this is that in the same conversation, Cypher says that he doesn’t want to “remember anything”. President Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Every Republican is Hitler (and/or Judas) and will destroy the world, before the new Republican who is Hitler and will destroy the world comes along.

In 2020, Hollywood was fine when the world came twice came to to an end: As the Babylon Bee joked in April of 2020, “Inspiring: Celebrities Spell Out ‘We’re All In This Together’ With Their Yachts.” And then a couple of months later, the studios issued supportive press releases during the summer riots, when businesses were being looted and cities set alight. But having lost wide swatches of their audiences to first streaming, and then the pandemic’s disruption to the audience’s regular moviegoing habit, shouldn’t the industry be dealing with the end of its own world? As Toto begins his piece, “The era of the movie star ended some time ago, assuming your last name isn’t Cruise.”

Related:

WITH DNC IN MIND, CITY BANS CARRYING URINE, FECES: Driver for Amazon caught on video purportedly pooping on front porch of one Los Angeles home, urinating at another.

Classical reference in headline.)

YES, BUT THEY WOULD HAVE DONE MUCH BETTER EXCEPT FOR ALL OF THE HOARDERS, WRECKERS, KULAKS AND UZBEKS IN THE BUSINESS WORLD:

This is amazing.

Kids exposed to communist indoctrination during schooling had lower incomes as adults.

Communist indoctrination causally lowers lifetime achievement! https://t.co/rAxCpJBR5v pic.twitter.com/yEXcGfSSSs

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) May 11, 2025

Especially the Uzbeks:

Fortunately, those who fail can take solace in the bottom of a Strelnokoff Bottle:

Flashback: Remembering 3CP-1.

BOBOS IN THE PANTS AISLE: ‘Conservative’ David Brooks Wants Everyone to Know He Has Admired Joe Biden for a Long Time.

Of course — his trouser creases were almost as sharp as Obama’s!

TOTALLY WORTHLESS: GOP Controlled House and Senate Sent Fewer Bills to GOP President Than Any Congress in 70 Years.

OPEN THREAD: The weekend’s not over until we say it is!

THIS ERA IS THE MOST PIVOTAL IN HUMAN HISTORY:

This era stands as the most pivotal in human history, surpassing the trials of Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, the Victorian era, and the Cold War. Rome’s collapse disrupted 70 million lives; today’s threats would annihilate 8 billion. Medieval plagues ravaged regions; pandemics now encircle the globe in days. Victorian progress reshaped economies; AI could redefine humanity itself. The Cold War’s nuclear peril was singular; this era’s risks—AI, nuclear war, pandemics, and socialist propaganda—are multifaceted and amplified by global connectivity. The Soviet Union and Venezuela’s socialist failures warn of propaganda’s ruinous potential, a threat magnified by digital platforms. This is not merely a chapter but the hinge upon which history turns, where our decisions will forge or fracture humanity’s future, unmatched by any moment before.

Hey, at least before AI goes full Skynet and destroys mankind, it’s allowing us to make cute Ghibli-style cartoons and simulated action figures. So really, how terrifying can it be?

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: Texas Puts the Kibosh on EPIC City, the Proposed Muslim ‘Parallel Society.’

I’M SORRY, I THOUGHT WE WERE TRYING TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN: Krispy Kreme pausing expansion of national partnership with McDonald’s.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS:

Wow who could have guessed this story from @jonkarl is a lie?

Here's the actual story of Trump renovating a plane that Qatar once owned, because Boeing has failed to deliver a new air force one

It almost feels like @jonkarl is being paid by Boeing https://t.co/DGEdGsWTFD https://t.co/k40P7OZOfH

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) May 11, 2025

WSJ covered this on May 1:https://t.co/7UzeNTtQhl

— Anna K. Gorisch (@AnnaGorisch) May 11, 2025

Here’s the Journal article: Trump Wants a New Air Force One So Badly He’s Refurbishing a Qatari Plane.

UPDATE:

TRUMP TO SIGN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO CUT PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES BY 30% TO 80% — HE SAYS TO MATCH OTHER COUNTRIES.