PLEASE CLAP:

CHUCK SCHUMER: "We are here today to throw our support behind VP Kamala Harris!"

*Crickets*

"I'm clapping! You don't have to."pic.twitter.com/LXOpKcEVie

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) July 23, 2024

ED MORRISSEY: Did Democrats Conduct a ‘Palace Coup?’

Besides all of this, a palace coup plot has to have a rational plan in place for alternative leadership. Are we to believe that Democrats did all of this just to have Kamala Harris as their new nominee? Seriously? A Harris nomination was what Democrats hoped to avoid, as Dump Biden leaders made plain with their talk about an “open process” at the convention. That fell apart because of the Kamala Conundrum, but also because none of the suggested candidates to succeed Biden wanted to get their skirts dirty in this process.

This wasn’t a palace coup. It was a panic-induced Abandon Ship! that left the captain on board to sink after he torpedoed his own vessel. That’s not to say that the ousting of Biden isn’t a smelly, corrupt action; it clearly is, and the chaos it unleashed did real damage to the body politic. And for that matter, their years-long conspiracy to cover up Biden’s increasing senility did far worse damage and should destroy their credibility for a generation or more. But to call this a palace coup is to give the hair-tearing panic merchants far too much credit.

Couldn’t the administration call in Woody Allen and Diane Keaton and clone a new Biden out of his nose?

SCHRÖDINGER’S PRESIDENT: “Biden Passes the Torch as a Voice on a Speakerphone,” Jim Geraghty writes.

This is how the Biden presidency reaches its denouement — a voice on a speakerphone cheering on Kamala Harris, an unseen presence like Charlie from Charlie’s Angels.

Biden is here, but not here; the leader of his party, but not the leader of his party; the commander in chief, but not really in command anymore. He’s Schrödinger’s president

For what it’s worth, when Biden called in to his old campaign headquarters to offer words of support for Harris yesterday, he didn’t sound that bad, or at least not all that different than he has in his last few public appearances. And the latest update from Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, reports that he’s almost back to normal amid his bout with Covid:

His symptoms have almost resolved completely. His pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature remain absolutely normal. His oxygen saturation continues to be excellent on room air. His lungs remain clear. The President continues to perform all of his presidential duties.

If Biden’s symptoms have almost resolved completely and his vitals are absolutely normal, why is this guy harder to see than J. D. Salinger?  I am not exaggerating when I say there have been more Bigfoot sightings than Biden sightings in the past week.

Last night, Sarah linked to Jordan Schachtel’s Substack, headlined, “Exclusive: President Biden suffered an undisclosed medical emergency during his time in Las Vegas, police sources say,” which itself expanded upon a tweet yesterday from Charlie Kirk:

You can also find people on Twitter last night wildly speculating that Biden’s voice on his phone call to Kamala, which sounded unusually hoarse and sibilant, was the result of either a stroke or AI generated. Oliver Wiseman asks at the Free Press, “Where the hell is the president?”

Last Wednesday, Biden flew from Las Vegas, where he had been campaigning, to his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware. It was there that he isolated and stewed, alongside only his immediate family and closest advisers, and reportedly came to the decision to step down. According to the White House daily schedule, the president will reemerge this afternoon and return to Washington.

Assuming that happens, the president’s disappearing act will be over, but it will have been a strange stretch in which Biden vanished at the most crucial moment.

Into the void left by the amazing disappearing president appeared all manner of theories about what is going on. Some wilder than others. Was the president faking his Covid? Did Biden even sign his own announcement? Is he much sicker than his aides and doctors are letting on? Is he even. . . alive?

Until then, it all feels very Soviet, when an administration that came into office promising to “bring transparency and truth back to government,” and ends with a nation of amateur Kremlinologists just wandering what’s going on, and who’s running the show. Or as Steve wrote this morning: When ‘The Death of Stalin’ Comes to Life.

UPDATE: Perhaps I should have said that half the nation are amateur Kremlinologists right now:

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY COULD BE INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY: Anti-Israel Radicals Are ‘Hopeful’ Kamala Will Cast Aside the Jewish State. They Have Plenty of Reasons To Be.

Anti-Israel radicals who resigned their government posts over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel are betting on Vice President Kamala Harris to adopt more hardline policies toward the Jewish state. It’s a good bet: Harris throughout her vice presidency touted her public opposition to Israel’s war on Hamas and praised campus protesters who have violently harassed Jews.

Harris, who is on track to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee following Joe Biden’s departure from the race, was among the first administration officials to chastise Israel for its conduct during the war. In December, just two months after Hamas slaughtered more than 1,200 Jews, Harris publicly broke with Biden’s support for Israel, saying the Jewish state had killed “too many innocent Palestinians” and “must do more to protect innocent civilians.”

Since that time, the vice president has repeatedly thrown her support behind anti-Israel protesters in America, saying they show “exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.” Such comments are driving “optimism” among anti-Israel elements in the Democratic Party, according to reports, with several administration officials who resigned over Biden’s support for Israel expressing hope that a Harris presidency will bring about a break in U.S. relations with the Jewish state.

Biden’s absence could make this week’s meeting with Netanyahu something else: Kamala Harris aide says VP will meet Netanyahu at White House, doesn’t announce time.

How much will she be rehearsing ahead of time? Too Fun to Check: Harris’ Mock Prep For … a Media Dinner Party?

JOHN PODHORETZ: Gone Biden Gone.

So, yes, Biden had to go. But the solution here is probably no solution. I’m not saying Kamala Harris can’t win the presidency against Donald Trump. The Lord is the only one who knows, and given how He’s altered reality for the past 25 days, I wouldn’t put it past Him to keep throwing us for loops because, let’s face it, we’re sinners and we’re bad and we deserve everything we’re getting. We have the greatest country on earth, the greatest constitution, the greatest economy, the greatest everything, and we’ve ended up fostering a political culture so generally nauseating that even Screwtape must be feeling a little sorry for us.

But left to her own devices and without some form of divine or demonic or newsy intervention, Kamala Harris is exceedingly unlikely to win the presidency. I say this because we saw her in action as a candidate for a year in 2019. She was so extraordinarily bad at it she had to drop out of the race in December before voters—any voters—let her know in no uncertain terms how much she stank up the joint. Had it not been for Biden’s pledge to pick a token vice president—I mean, when you say you’re going to pick a woman of color, you are literally tokenizing the office—she would likely be a relatively obscure member of the Senate.

Why do I say this? Because she’s been a relatively obscure vice president. She has not risen even to the barely discernible standards of the world’s least consequential office. Moreover, to the extent that people even think about her, they  just don’t like her very much. We know this because polling tells us so, not because Fox News tells us so. Her approval rating is 38.6 percent. That is very bad. It’s so bad that Donald Trump’s approval rating is higher.

What the Democrats who are now doing a St. Vitus Dance of ecstasy over the change in their fortunes are not reckoning with is that the entire appeal of the Democratic party in 2020 was its seeming stability as opposed to Donald Trump’s unsteadiness in a crisis. Well, the country has been in a crisis for 25 days as it reckons with the meaning of its infirm president, and you know which party looks unstable? It’s not Trump’s party.

In contrast, as Podhoretz writes at the conclusion of a post from yesterday titled, “Trump Is Now a Three-Fer,” “He’s the closest thing we have to an incumbent president now—and the candidate of change. And Kamala Harris has some major work to do to overcome the instability that has emanated from her party during the most unstable moment in American politics since the Florida recount.”

PAULA BOLYARD: The Worldwide IT Outage Isn’t Funny, but the Memes Sure Are.

We joked about the satiric tweet below on Saturday, but apparently, it really is entering “fake but accurate” territory: Windows 3.1 saves the day during CrowdStrike outage — Southwest Airlines scrapes by with archaic OS. “Southwest was often criticized for its outdated systems, but an old but proven operating system saved it (and its customers) from the stress that most other airlines were experiencing. Nevertheless, Southwest passengers weren’t 100% unaffected by the CrowdStrike crash, as many airports also encountered system issues. Aside from Windows 3.1, Southwest also uses Windows 95 for its staff scheduling system. It is a newer operating system — about three years younger than Windows 3.1 — but it’s ancient compared to today’s tech. Many of the airline’s staff have been complaining about it already.”

JOHN GILL CALLS INTO KAMALA CAMPAIGN EVENT: Slurring, raspy Biden calls in to Kamala Harris’ first visit to campaign headquarters: ‘I love you!’

🚨 Biden (allegedly) calls in to his former campaign HQ before Kamala speaks: "I know yesterday's news was surprising" pic.twitter.com/qZODLao6UW

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 22, 2024

Interesting gaffe by Kamala: “It is so good to hear our President’s voice. Joe, I know you’re still on the reco… on the call… and we’ve been talking everyday…”

No, I don't think that was AI or fake or whatever. This whole situation is just super weird. The first time he's spoken since his announcement and it's on the phone to a campaign rally where he just kinda rushes past it? That's weird!

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 22, 2024

As America’s Newspaper of Record notes, “America Just Kinda Curious If President Alive.”

Is it too much to ask for a photograph with Biden holding a copy of today’s issue of the New York Times?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend writes: “There’s nothing normal about this, and we should not be coerced into pretending there is.”

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Dems Pull Off Successful Insurrection https://t.co/VCMJvIvJJq pic.twitter.com/f49ylkMeYZ

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 21, 2024

POUNCING AND SEIZING UPDATE:

● Pennsylvania Democrats tout Biden’s legacy, Harris succession as Republicans pounce on disarray.

—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette yesterday.

● Republicans seize on Joe Biden announcement to demand he step down as president immediately.

—London Independent yesterday.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF “SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB” AND 21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Secret lives of the vegan porn professors as they reveal their wild journey to OnlyFans stardom — and their major regret.

DON’T GET COCKY: Trump is now certain to win the presidency.

JIMMY CARTER SAYS YES: Howie Carr: So long, Joe Biden, the worst president, ever.

The. Worst. President. Ever.

When do you think they’ll let Dementia Joe know that he’s officially dropped out?

Who could have ever imagined that Biden would be dumped before Bob Menendez?

The Deep State has been telling us for four years about those 81 million ballots, er votes, that he got. But now his own comrades throw him under the bus like he’s… Andrew Cuomo or Sam Brinton.

For once, Obama was right: “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to bleep things up.”

It’s hard to know who’s going to need grief counselors more: the mullahs in Tehran, the greed-crazed oligarchs in Ukraine, or the Red Chinese butchers.

Quick, someone grab KJP’s belt and shoelaces. She’s going the way of Claudine Gay, for sure.

National Panhandler Radio has begun playing an endless loop of the Funeral March, like Radio Moscow when Joe Stalin stopped breathing in 1953. It’s what the apparatchiks do.

The biggest difference between Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden was that Carter was at least trying to do the right thing by the United States of America.

Everything Biden’s handlers conspired to accomplish was designed to subvert not just American society, but western civilization in general.

Exit question: There’s a hidden message in Biden’s humiliating withdrawal letter that should terrify every American. And the shaming question: Who on earth is running the country?

That’s a topic that Daniel Greenfield recently attempted to answer in depth: Who’s Running the Country?

Related: Why Biden finally quit. “Senior Biden aides were bracing for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who’d worked behind the scenes to encourage others in the party toward the kind of collective action that might finally push the president to end his campaign, to go public this week and possibly even disclose Democratic polling clarifying Biden’s dire political straits. ‘Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,’ said one Democrat familiar with private conversations who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. ‘She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.’”

(Classical reference in headline.)

MARK STEYN: The Coming of Kamala. “If anyone thinks this is the last plot twist, you’re forgetting we’re in the final seasons of Dynasty here — the Fallon-abducted-by-space-aliens Moldavian-massacre phase.”

OUT ON A LIMB: Biden’s media sycophants are the biggest losers of him stepping aside.

The losers are equally obvious. The Biden family, which held on to power in an attempt to white-knuckle it to the end, was ultimately rebuffed. Dr. Jill Biden, Hunter and Ashley will not get their way and will be headed to the White House exits soon enough. And Biden’s allies who stuck through til the end look all the worse for deluding themselves about his capacity. The obvious question, already raised by multiple Republican voices, is how he can possibly remain as president if he cannot even withstand the rigors of a political campaign. The pressure on Biden’s team will be immense and not just come from the right of center press. Having been lied to for so long, the media will not just accept the White House’s excuses as gospel.

Yet perhaps no one is a bigger loser in this scenario than Joe Biden’s media sycophants, who continued to publicly maintain over the past three weeks that everything was just fine, or even if it wasn’t, that Biden represented the one great hedge against the anti-democracy forces of the right. Clearly, in the end, not even Biden himself believed that to be true — or he was incapable of convincing the donors, activists and party leaders that it was the truth. Only the likes of Joe and Mike, Joy and Sunny, Maddow and O’Donnell and the cohort of late-night hosts not named Jon Stewart or Bill Maher were there with Biden at the end of all things. They deserve to be laughingstocks — and they will be.

Lots of performance art this afternoon: Woke media goes into meltdown as CNN’s Van Jones CRIES on air and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow shares utter disbelief after Biden steps down.

Viewers were stunned while watching Jones’ tears on television. One person tweeted: ‘Van Jones is crying on CNN because of what Biden selflessly did for his country.’

Another wrote: ‘Van Jones crying on CNN is pathetic. Grow up man.’ While a third added: ‘Van Jones crying on CNN again. Get this guy OUTTA HERE.’

Last month, MSNBC host Maddow said she fears that Trump will put her in an internment camp in the event he is reelected this upcoming election season.

In an interview with CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcey, Maddow was asked about her concerns about being personally victimized by the Trump administration if he is to be winner of the 2024 presidential election.

‘Trump and his allies are openly talking about weaponizing the government to seek revenge against critics in media and politics, with some of his extremist allies even talking about jailing their fellow Americans,’ said Darcy. ‘You’re one of his most notable critics on television. Are you worried that you could be a target?’

Maddow replied: ‘I’m worried about the country broadly if we put someone in power who is openly avowing that he plans to build camps to hold millions of people, and to ‘root out’ what he’s described in subhuman terms as his ‘enemy from within.’

Morning Joe — if Comcast and/or NBC management allow it air — should be astonishing tomorrow.

DOWNFALL: Biden’s White House and campaign aides learned about Joe dropping out from his Twitter announcement, according to Politico:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Conspiracy Theory Update: Did some staffer just send this out in his name, then they told him later it was his idea?

I CAN IMAGINE WHAT WILL BE, UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN: As Glenn noted a few minutes ago, the DNC-MSM will now begin marching in lockstep behind Kamala. So watch any negative reports about her suddenly stop.

But before they’re “unburdened by what has been,” here’s a flashback to the London Daily Mail in December of 2021: ‘You put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism’ says former Kamala Harris staffer. Harris is branded a ‘bully’ by ex-aides who claim she refused to read briefings, then scolded them if she was slated for being unprepared as ‘FOUR’ staffers head for the exit:

• A former underling of Kamala Harris she routinely refused to review briefing materials and would then scold employees when she appeared unprepared

• The ex-employee likened the vice president to a workplace bully

• Even more staffers are considering leaving Vice President Kamala Harris’ office, people familiar with the conversations revealed

• Four top aides to Harris will exit in the span of about a month

• Harris ‘staff are leaving because they’re burned out and they don’t want to be permanently branded a ‘Harris person,’ Axios reported

• Among those leaving are her chief spokesperson Symone Sanders

• Peter Velz, director of press operations, and Vince Evans, deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement are also expected to leave

• Ashley Etienne, Harris’ former communications director, left last month

Exit question: Can Kamala Harris shake off her weaknesses to beat Trump?

UPDATE: Biden Endorses Kamala to Ride the Bomb Down Instead of Him.

But at the very least, he has formally stepped down from the presidential race, in a statement that reads like it was written by his aides for him at gunpoint, and perhaps without his direct knowledge. There was a later, weirdly separate endorsement of Kamala as his heir-perhaps, almost as if he’d made a last-second decision to switch his place with her atop the Dr. Strangelove H-bomb, the one plummeting toward November. But there was no stirring rhetoric, and certainly no immediate national address — they’re going to need to make sure ol’ Joe is the proper “headspace” for that one, to put it delicately — just a limp, rhetorically hollow “so long, and thanks for all the fish.”

In late July. After the primary. After the first debate. A month before the Democratic convention. With no agreed-upon successor, nobody vetted, nobody remotely acceptable to all factions of the Democratic Party. Party delegates are enraged, disunited, and confused. Protesters are out in the streets. And it all heads straight for my hometown of Chicago, come late August — where I expect our mayor to be cheering the rioters on, rather than suppressing them.

Perhaps following the instructions of “Dr.” Jill, Team Biden seemed to really have it in for Harris, burdening her with a thousand projects she was clearly unqualified for. Is “riding the bomb down” their final going away present?

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: President Joe Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race.

President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will end his presidential re-election campaign, bringing an abrupt and humbling conclusion to his half-century-long political career and scrambling the race for the White House just four months before Election Day.

Biden, 81, could not reverse growing sentiment within his party that he was too frail to serve and destined to lose to Donald Trump in November.

—NBC News, today. Curiously, all that “too frail to serve” talk was dismissed by NBC News as “cheap fakes” as recently as June 19th.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Jill Biden Drops Out Of Presidential Race.

DEVELOPING: President Joe Biden Drops Out of Presidential Race.

UPDATE: Biden endorses Kamala:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend comments: “Everything Kamala has ever gotten has been handed to her.”

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Left-Wing Trump-as-Hitler Iconography in the Mainstream Media Responsible for the Attempt to Assassinate the 45th President?

EARLIER: “It’s a shame the [shooter] missed.’ *Next breath* ‘I’m scared of political violence.’”

NO IT ISN’T; IT’S BLUEANON: It’s Shocking How Many Democrats Think the Trump Assassination Attempt Was Staged.

THE OBAMA HANGOVER. Or, How We Got Here:

● Shot: Biden’s Obama grudge drives 2024 resolve.

President Biden’s lingering regret and anger from when Democrats pushed him not to run in 2016 is fueling his determination to stay in the race in 2024, current and former Biden aides told Axios.

Why it matters: Several people close to Biden said they believe his bitterness toward former President Obama, and the congressional Democrats now trashing him, is making the president more determined to continue his campaign even as some of his own aides think an exit is inevitable.

• Many Obama advisers pressured Biden to not run in 2016 and Biden’s resentment over that episode has diminished Obama’s influence with Biden as the president contemplates his path forward.

• If Obama directly pushed Biden to not to run this time, Biden aides told Axios it could make Biden even more resolved to remain the nominee.

• A former Biden aide said: “Obama already used that chit in 2016 when his team lobbied him against running. You don’t get to do that more than once.”

—Axios, today.

● Chaser: Watch: Inside the Night President Obama Took On Donald Trump.

It was April of 2011. For weeks, Donald Trump had been fanning the flames of the “birther” movement and attacking President Barack Obama on television — demanding that Obama produce his birth certificate, implying that he was not born in the United States, and questioning both his religious identity and the legality of his presidency.

But on April 30, the tables were turned. Trump was the recipient of President Obama’s jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and Trump political adviser Roger Stone tells FRONTLINE in The Choice 2016 that the dinner was a turning point for Trump.

“I think that is the night he resolves to run for president,” Stone says in the opening scene of FRONTLINE’s two-hour documentary on Trump and Clinton, which premieres on Tues., Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST on PBS stations nationwide.

“I think that he is kind of motivated by it: ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all,’” Stone adds.

—PBS’s Frontline, September 22, 2016.

● Hangover: Aaron Sorkin: Democrats should pick Mitt Romney to beat Trump.

Playwright and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has today encouraged the Democratic Party to nominate Republican senator Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate.

In a guest essay for the New York Times Sorkin, who created political drama series The West Wing and won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay of The Social Network, argues that former GOP presidential candidate Romney “would peel off enough Republican votes to win, probably by a lot” against Donald Trump. Sorkin adds that nominating the Utah senator would be “a clear and powerful demonstration that this election isn’t about what our elections are usually about, but about stopping a deranged man from taking power”.

Sorkin has been a steadfast supporter of the Democratic Party for several decades. Between 1999 and 2013, he is on record as having donated $289,400 to party campaigns, while he wrote campaign ads for the Democrats during the 2004 presidential election.

When Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the presidency in 2016 Sorkin published an open letter to his wife and teenage daughter, calling the result “truly horrible” and Trump “a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn”. He added of the Republican’s supporters that “the Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons,” and suggested that “there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters.”

In today’s NYT article, Sorkin similarly labels Trump “a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder” and “a dump truck of ignorance and bad intentions”. He also accuses the GOP nominee of “treat[ing] the law as something for suckers and poor people” and of being “a hero for white supremacists”. Arguing that “there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden”, Sorkin claims that nominating Romney to take on Trump “would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice”.

—UnHerd, today.

Given Romney’s entire career as the ultimate RINO, I could understand him wanting to finally make it official, not to mention his lingering Stockholm Syndrome after how the DNC-MSM ran him through the wringer during the 2012 election. But why would black Democrats vote for a man whom the current president angrily shouted was going to put them “back in chains?”

Incidentally, while the Axios headline today is “Biden’s Obama grudge drives 2024 resolve,” how much of a grudge do you think Barry is still carrying over Joe?

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s Joe Biden casually implying that Barack Obama is gay. From June of 2007. pic.twitter.com/G6GAyXeBKg

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 21, 2024

FROM THE HOME OFFICE INSIDE THE BIDENBUNKER: Narrative Buster: Top Ten Reasons Biden Will Fly to Hawaii This Month.

So the celebrity fundraisers haven’t come to an end for Biden. The AP reports that Biden has fundraisers still scheduled for every day of the month, starting on Monday. Will those be as lucrative as the bash that George Clooney hosted and where Barack Obama appeared?Probably not, but contrary to reports, Dem big-ticket donors aren’t locking the checkbooks in their Maseratis either.

This supports what I have said all along. All Biden has to do is ride out the next three weeks and the Dump Biden movement will collapse. If he’s still raising money, and if Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez still support him, Biden has no reason to get out … unless he and Democrats and the entire Protection Racket Media are willing to admit that he’s senile and has been for the past two-plus years at the very least. And then admit their complicity in a conspiracy to cover up that fact and defraud the American public.

Until then, Democrats are stuck with Biden, and will shortly return to the gaslighting of the last two-plus years. The media will crank up the Republicans Pounce®! and Cheap Fakes! narratives. But no one will forget that the emperor’s new clothes were a scam and that they’ve seen Biden naked.

Keep fighting, Joe!

UPDATE: Christian Toto takes a shot at drafting his own list: Top 10 Reasons Letterman Is Headlining Biden Fundraiser. Late-night icon signs on for starry night, but will Biden still be on ticket by then?

JON GABRIEL: We landed on the moon. Now we can’t even keep the Gaza aid pier afloat.

More recently, we fled a hard-won victory in Iraq and were chased out of Afghanistan by tribesmen sporting small arms. Today we can’t seem to stop the Russians in Ukraine and mostly ignore China’s increasing threats against Taiwan.

We can’t even keep a small pier afloat off Gaza.

Remember the pier? In his March State of the Union address, President Joe Biden announced its deployment to “enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”

* * * * * * * *

During its brief deployment, an estimated 8,000 metric tons of aid were delivered via the pier. That’s the equivalent of about 600 trucks worth — the number humanitarian agencies claim need to enter Gaza every day.

Meanwhile, the war continues.

At this point, few Americans expect another “giant leap for mankind.”  But “one small step” would be nice.

In their 1989 book Apollo, Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox wrote about JFK’s role in birthing the American moon landing program:

At 1:07 Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday morning, April 12, 1961, U. S. radar recorded the launch of an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Space Center on the steppes of Kazakhstan in the south-central part of the U.S.S.R. Wiesner called Salinger at 1:30 to report the launch and again at 5:30 to tell him that Moscow had announced a successful recovery of the spacecraft, Vostok I. Its passenger, cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, had completed one full orbit of the earth and was said to be feeling fine.

As four years earlier, when the Soviets put Sputnik into orbit, the nation looked at the skies and saw calamity. Perhaps Shepard would have beaten the Russians into space, were it not for a few minor technical delays. No matter. Appearances could have a reality of their own, the Washington Post editorialized in its Thursday edition: “In these matters, what people believe is as important as the actual facts, and many persons will of course take this event as new evidence of Soviet superiority.” An influential congressman from New York announced that he was ready to call for a full-scale congressional investigation—the American people must be properly alerted to the need for wartime mobilization. Abroad, an independent newspaper in Manila reported that the people in its part of the world “see in all this the supposed superiority of the Communist way of life, economic system, and materialistic philosophy.” Egyptian president Gamel Nasser had “no doubt that the launching of man into space will turn upside down not only many scientific views, but also many political and military trends.”

Overnight, a gap in Soviet and American rocket technology that had been years in the making became Kennedy’s personal failure. As a writer for the New York Times pointed out, such events would inevitably be compared with the President’s efforts to present himself as a “young, active, and vigorous leader of a strong and advancing nation.” As if to underscore how the youthful image could backfire, a political cartoon the day after Gagarin’s flight showed a gleeful Nikita Khrushchev bouncing a rock-sized spacecraft off the head of a confused and boyish John Kennedy.

* * * * * * * *

Vostok I was not the only crisis on Kennedy’s mind that day. Even as he met with his advisers to talk about space, a brigade of soldiers composed of refugees from Castro’s Cuba was assembling at jumping-off points in Guatemala, awaiting Kennedy’s final approval for a landing at the Bay of Pigs. Two days later, at the last go/no-go decision point at noon on Sunday, he authorized the expedition to proceed to the beaches.

The Cuban brigade landed in the pre-dawn darkness of Monday morning, beginning what Pierre Salinger would remember as the three grimmest days of the Kennedy presidency. From the first hours, Castro’s army responded to the invasion with unexpected efficiency. By the evening of the first day, the invasion forces were far behind schedule. By Tuesday morning, they were stalled and trying to hang on. By Tuesday afternoon, they were encircled by 20,000 Cuban army troops and the White House Situation Room began a deathwatch. At a midnight meeting that didn’t break up until two o’clock Wednesday morning, the President rejected last-minute proposals for U.S. intervention and accepted the inevitability of defeat. It was just a week to the hour since the flight of Vostok I.

On that disastrous Wednesday, as the world learned of the full extent of the Cuban debacle, President Kennedy called Vice President Lyndon Johnson to the Oval Office. The topic of the meeting was the space program. They conferred alone for about half an hour. The next day, Johnson received a memorandum from the President. “In accordance with our conversation,” Kennedy wrote, Johnson was to bring him answers to five questions. Number one on the list was, “Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?” Kennedy wanted answers “at the earliest possible moment.”

The next day, Kennedy held another press conference. This time when he was asked about space, his tone from the week before had shifted dramatically. Now he said, “If we can get to the moon before the Russians, then we should.”

Compare that (which I heavily truncated from a much lengthier description in Cox and Murray’s book to Jim Geraghty’s take back in May on Biden willed the Gaza Pier into creation: Busted Gaza Pier Has All the Markings of a Joe Biden Op.

Our Phil Klein fumes, “The Gaza pier is every bit the disaster we all expected it would be when Biden made the ridiculous proposal in his State of the Union address back in March. . . . This debacle was not only predictable, it was predicted by many.”

Now, the Pentagon’s JLOTS [Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore] guys aren’t stupid. They knew the likelihood that weather conditions would require operations to halt at least temporarily, and the potential risk to equipment and personnel. This is why you’re seeing speculation that the Pentagon prioritized the president’s orders over a reasonable assessment of the risk.

We don’t know who, precisely, came up with the idea to build a pier. Perhaps on some future date, we’ll hear that it was the proposal of national-security adviser Jake Sullivan or Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or someone else. The buck stops with the president, anyway; he’s the one who authorized the mission.

But . . . come on. The plan was to build a pier on the front door of a war zone, in the absolute minimally acceptable environmental conditions, and hope for the best? That has Joe Biden’s fingerprints all over it.

Biden’s foreign-policy ideas always have this, “Guys, it’s so easy” simplicity to them.

By the way, since we’re discussing the first manned moon landing, as I asked back then, how’s Biden’s cancer-curing “moonshot” coming along?

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