SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: It’s the 4th anniversary of the biggest lie the Biden-Harris administration ever told. It’s only gotten worse.

Three weeks before the 2020 election, the New York Post published its first article on the contents of Mr. Biden’s laptop. The report featured an email in which one of Mr. Biden’s business partners mentioned a meeting with President Biden. President Biden had denied meeting with Hunter Biden’s business associates while on the campaign trail.

Photographs later proved that President Biden had met with one of Hunter Biden’s business partners. In fact, everything on his laptop was authentic—and the FBI, members of the Biden-Harris campaign team and Hunter Biden himself knew it all along. Instead of squarely addressing the content of the laptop and telling the American people the truth, the Biden-Harris campaign developed an elaborate scheme to mislead voters just three weeks before the presidential election by pretending the laptop was Russian disinformation.

The American people understand it is not uncommon for political campaigns to spin negative stories, but this went far beyond spin. It was a lie.

Before the New York Post had even published its reporting, the FBI began to pressure Twitter and Facebook to suppress the story. Facebook restricted posts that linked to the story to ensure fewer people saw the content. Twitter completely banned links to the report and shut down the New York Post’s Twitter account entirely. The Post’s account remained censored for 16 days.

Flashbacks:

● Poll: Majority of Americans Say Big Tech Censorship of Hunter Laptop Story Interfered With Election.

● The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

● Finally, return with us to the crazy week that the Post’s laptop story broke and this banger of an exchange:

IRRATIONAL ANGER IS A SIGN OF DEMENTIA: Biden Conference Calls Go Badly. “Things got especially confrontational when Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) brought up the crisis in confidence in Biden being our commander-in-chief. Crow, a veteran with a Bronze Star, was excoriated by Biden, who trashed his service and once again used his dead son as some political playing card. The contents of the calls were not known until now. What a nasty piece of work Biden is. Mr. Empathy is a total a-hole, but you knew that already.”

Plus: “These antics aren’t what you want 16 weeks until Election Day.”

No, they’re exactly what I want. The “cabal” installed Biden in 2020, and I want them to suffer for that near-treasonous act.

UPDATE (FROM THE COMMENTS):

pic.twitter.com/81UitVYU0I

— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) July 17, 2024

GOOD QUESTION: Why is the pundit class suddenly stampeding to get rid of Biden? “They seem to have gone into cabal mode to capture the post-debate narrative. Was it — to use Solnit’s phrase — ‘a sort of insider coup’? Who did this without knowing that they could — via stampede — drive their own candidate out of the race?”

Well, it’s not because the pundit class has suddenly found out he’s senile and incompetent. It’s because they realize that the voters have found that out.

AXIOS: BIDEN STAFF “MISERABLE,” ALARMED AS PRESSURE BUILDS.

Many White House, Biden campaign and Democratic officials are increasingly worried that President Biden isn’t up to continuing his campaign or finishing a second term, despite his insistence that he won’t be pushed out.

Why it matters: Outside pressure for Biden to drop his re-election bid grew wider and louder on the Fourth of July, especially from major donors. Doubts also are rising inside the house.

The big picture: “Everyone is miserable, and senior advisers are a total black hole,” a White House official told Axios. “Even if you’re trying to focus on work, nothing is going to break through or get any acknowledgment” from bosses.

• A high-ranking Democratic National Committee official told Axios: “The only thing that can really allay concerns is for the president to demonstrate that he’s capable of running this campaign.”

• “Everything else feels like ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ by his inner circle to prop him up.”

Spotted by Ed Morrissey yesterday, Axios also noted that ‘The President Has Lost All Independence.’ Ed responded:

Have readers ever heard of Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, or Ashley Williams? I’ve worked in politics for over 20 years now, and only Williams’ name seems vaguely familiar. Only Bernal’s name comes up in our archives, once almost exactly two years ago and only as brief mention in someone else’s statement. Presidents hire aides to help and support their work, but those aides are supposed to work for the president, not run him.

It almost makes the sudden appearance of Hunter Biden in policy meetings look explicable. Why else would Biden have “a convicted felon” in meetings with officials? Is it to break through a cabal of aides desperately trying to keep Biden’s incapacitation under wraps?

Meanwhile, here’s Ben Smith at Semafor: A ‘scared’ Biden aide sounds an alarm.

Midday on the Fourth of July, I received a call from a government official with regular access to the West Wing, who said they had reached a breaking point and wanted to sound the alarm.

The person insisted on careful ground rules: No details on the specific policy area they’d work on, no gender, age, or sexual orientation. Their credibility basically depends on my vouching that they’re a serious person, which I can do — though I should also say this person has nothing to say about the president’s physical condition, and was limited to their own experience outside Biden’s tight inner circle.

Here is the assertion this person would like to get across: It’s unclear even to some inside the West Wing policy process which policy issues reach the president, and how. Major decisions go into an opaque circle that includes White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients (who talks to the president regularly) and return concluded. (The big exception to this pattern, they said, is foreign policy.)

This pattern had already been a topic of discussion, and curiosity, among the high-powered aides who work in and around the White House. The rituals of paperflow are technical, but they say they’re surprised by the lack of briefings to the president, and of readouts from consultations with the president and worry about the possibility of decisions “being made without him.”

My source has no reputation for being involved in factional fights on hot button issues, and no obvious ulterior motive for picking up the phone.

“I’m super proud of the policies,” the person said. “I’m talking to you because I’m incredibly upset and scared for the country and I would like to do what I can.”

Or as PJM alum David Steinberg tweets:

If only there had been signs before:

● Who’s our real president? Joe Biden — or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?

—Glenn in the New York Post, September 23rd, 2022.

● Former Top Obama Advisor David Axelrod Shreds Biden, Says He’s ‘Not in Command.’

—Bob Hoge, Red State, July 1st, 2022.

● Who’s In Charge?

—Matthew Continetti, the Washington Free Beacon, July 1st, 2022.

● Joe Biden Doesn’t Know What You’re Talking About. “To watch Biden at the lectern was to experience shock and dismay interspersed with moments of alarm and dark humor. No wonder he hides from the media.”

—Continetti, NRO, January 22nd, 2022.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker: That Narrative Isn’t Going to Change Itself, Joe. “The Biden Cabal controls the DNC and Biden controls the overwhelming majority of delegates for the first vote — which the DNC might hold less than three weeks from now. If somebody is going to try some ‘really futile and stupid gesture’ to steal the nomination, the White House has made sure they won’t have much time to do it.”

THE “CABAL” AT WORK: The Gaslighting of the American Public. “What the evening exposed was not Biden’s infirmity, though it did that too, but the years-long effort on the part of various White House communications aides, Democratic lawmakers, and mainstream media organs to gaslight the American public. It is they who were left exposed last night, and the panic that has fallen over the Washington establishment is over their own public humiliation.”

JOHN LUCAS: Biden’s Disconnection from Reality Has Become Unacceptable. The Country cannot afford to ignore the Commander-ion-Chief’s lack of mental capacity for the job.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

THE EMPEROR’S NAKEDNESS IS BECOMING MORE OBVIOUS: Politico: Let’s Face It, Biden Has No Strategy on Iran.

Flashback: Time for Consequences: The “Cabal” who bragged about rigging the 2020 election stuck us with an incapable president at a time of crisis. Examples need to be made.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN DRAINING THE SPR WAS GOING TO LOWER PRICES: Biden administration cancels purchase for Strategic Petroleum Reserve, citing high prices.

How it started and where it is in one handy chart.

So, Biden drained the SPR in a midterm election year, promised to refill it, but has now stopped even the trickle into the SPR b/c refilling it might put upward pressure on oil prices during a presidential election year; Biden giveth, Biden taketh away (but mostly taketh)… pic.twitter.com/xxua6buHW5

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) April 3, 2024

That’s a 17-day supply of oil left in our “strategic” petroleum reserve, courtesy of a cabal that can’t (or won’t) think past the next public opinion poll.

WELL, YES: Increasing LNG Permits Is Critical to Sanctioning Russia.

Last month, the Biden administration took aim at its own domestic energy export capabilities by halting all permits for new LNG projects—effectively banning future exports. This came in sharp contrast to the administration’s recent sanctions on shipments of Russian gas from the Arctic LNG 2 terminal. While our allies have already pledged to reduce their Russian gas dependency, this shift hinged on the United States’ ability to promptly supply their alternative.

Japan, the world’s leading LNG importer, which was already in a precarious position due to its reliance on anticipated supplies from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG 2, is now facing an all-out energy crisis. Top Japanese power generator JERA said they expect the suspension “could affect the LNG security not only for us, but also for Japan and the world.”

Our allies have cause for concern over President Biden’s LNG moratorium, especially at a time when exporters want to add fifty percent capacity by 2026 to meet global demand. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under President Biden have been notoriously slow in processing permits for LNG exporters—setting the stage for this moratorium. The current eleven-month average processing time under Biden contrasts sharply with the seven-week time frame under the Trump administration and even the six-month duration under Obama.

The Biden Cabal couldn’t figure out how to slam the brakes on American domestic oil production but they’ve certainly put the squeeze on LNG.

THE BIDEN DEBACLE: White House Report Card: Angry-old-man campaign begins.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden: Should We Trust the Polls?

Polls conducted months before an election can be valuable in identifying trends in voter preferences, and in sending signals about where trouble lurks — as they have for Biden in key battleground states, where the Electoral College may be decided in 2024.

According to polling conducted last month for Bloomberg media, Biden trailed Trump in states that typically are competitive, such as Arizona and Georgia, and was tied in Wisconsin.

Outcomes in those and other swing states in November could determine who wins the presidency — much as they did in 2020. Biden carried Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, but a well-distributed shift of 43,000 votes would have given Trump victory in those states, producing a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College.

The election was that close.

It’s certainly “a live issue” whether the polls will get it right in 2024, as an academic journal article noted not long ago.

The pressure is on pollsters to avoid a recurrence of the misfire in 2020, when overall they understated Trump’s support. To that end, many of them have tweaked or altered their methodologies following the 2020 polling embarrassment.

As Glenn wrote at his Substack: Time for Consequences. The “Cabal” who bragged about rigging the 2020 election stuck us with an incapable president at a time of crisis. Examples need to be made.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN BIDEN WAS GOING TO RESTORE TATTERED RELATIONS WITH OUR ALLIES: Senior Biden Admin Official Refused To Meet With Israeli Ambassador During 2021 Hamas Conflict, Internal Emails Show.

Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was asked to meet with then-Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan in May 2021, when Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups were attacking Israel with missiles in protest of a court ruling that evicted six Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood.

Power declined the meeting, internal government emails show, saying that Israel must first reach a ceasefire with the Palestinian terror groups before being granted a sit-down. The behind-the-scenes diplomatic drama reveals how the United States used back channels to pressure Israel into stopping its siege on Hamas militants—tactics that once again may be in play as the Biden administration pushes Israel into ending its current war on the terror group.

“The Administrator [Power] would like to take the meeting with the Ambassador [Erdan] but wants to hold until there is a ceasefire or resolution to the currently [sic] escalation of the conflict,” a scheduler in Power’s office wrote in a May 18 email to USAID colleagues working in the region, according to a cache of internal documents first obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), a government watchdog group.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has begun to walk back its robust support for Israel’s war against Hamas, with Biden saying on Thursday that the Jewish state’s response to the worst terror attack in its history is “over the top.” The administration has also reportedly considered slowing down arms sales to Israel to pressure the Israeli government into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas.

It’s increasingly clear that the only reason the Biden Cabal hasn’t already put a serious squeeze on Israel was the horrific nature of the Hamas October 7 terror invasion.

But as October 7 fades from public memory, that will change.

YEP, THEY JUST CAN’T COVER IT UP ANYMORE: Documented: Biden’s memory loss dates to 2015, 25th Amendment territory.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

STACY MCCAIN: Joe Biden’s Punch Line Presidency. “As several commentators have noted, this finding — and the fact that Hur recommended no criminal charges, despite the clear evidence of Biden’s guilt — raises questions about the federal effort to prosecute former President Donald Trump for very similar offenses. When you consider the extent to which ‘get Trump’ has been the organizing principle of the Biden administration since Day One, this is a significant setback to that aspect of their agenda. But that wasn’t the worst of it. . . . That Biden has ‘diminished faculties and faulty memory’ is not really news to anyone who’s been paying attention, but having it stated so clearly in a Special Counsel’s report? ‘Republicans pounce!'”

He was diminished and faulty when he ran in 2020, they just covered it up. Now they’ve stopped, pretty much in unison across the entire establishment.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

I’M SURE THEY WANT TO PULL A TORRICELLI, BUT IT’S TOUGH: Could Democrats replace Biden as their nominee?

Both parties have moved away from the era when insiders in proverbial smoke-filled rooms could be kingmakers at the national conventions, and Biden has dominated every primary he’s competed in thus far. . . .

Still, the DNC Charter does make provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work?

Biden has said he will remain in the race and there is no indication otherwise, but the only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw.

He could do so while serving out the remainder of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968.

If Biden were to drop out between now and August, it would most likely create a free-for-all at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

If Biden calls it quits before he wins the majority of the Democratic delegates, it likely wouldn’t make a difference. Any new candidate who tried to enter the race would be unlikely to get on enough of the remaining ballots and therefore couldn’t win enough delegates.

Ultimately the decision would likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.

It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention.

Related: “Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence — from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors…. [T]he Biden crew clearly has no plan for how to deal with the president’s age except to shield him and hide him and browbeat reporters who point out that his mental state… is a genuine issue.”

But it is, and they can’t hide it anymore.

It was an issue in 2020 too, but they could hide it. Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

TOO KIND: Biden’s Unannounced Nighttime Speech an Absolute DISASTER.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Maybe old man Biden is past blame but surely institutional Washington, by this monstrous act of elder abuse, is guilty of foisting a fraud on the voters without parallel since Woodrow Wilson governed from a coma. How the hell was Joe going to make it to 2028?

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) February 9, 2024

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

Plus:

Kamala Harris watching Biden tonight. pic.twitter.com/1vsMM8wscI

— Dustin Grage 🇺🇸 (@GrageDustin) February 9, 2024

Or maybe it’s not Kamala: Michelle Obama may have notified people in ‘22 of her White House ambition: ‘I plan to run.’

HE WON’T LEAVE UNTIL AND UNLESS THE CABAL THAT INSTALLED HIM TELLS HIM TO: So Many Democrats So Want to See Slow Joe Gone. “If Biden is salvageable, the Democrat-Media Complex will do what it can to push him across the finish line in just one more race.”

BECAUSE OF COURSE: Biden Won’t Refreeze Iran’s $6 Billion.

As I guessed last night, the Biden Cabal won’t let anything derail their resurrection of Obama’s Iran Deal.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE:

The national security expertise sought by the Biden Cabal is how to secure the nation from conservatives and other undesirables. And say what you will about this White House, but with Brennan, Clapper, and Kolbe they’ve chosen experience and expertise in the matter.

LOS ANGELES ADMITS THAT GAS PRICES ARE OUT OF CONTROL AGAIN:

So, Los Angeles, how is Bidenomics working out for you? To listen to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, you would think that everything is just going swimmingly. ‘Bidenomics. It’s working!‘ But Angelinos are experiencing a very different reality and all of the political ad campaigns in the world aren’t going to change that. Even the local CBS News outlet was forced to confront the truth this week and they picked one of the most visible indicators that a majority of voters have to confront each and every week. Gas prices are once again going up. And they’ve been going up for months. In fact, they have now reached levels not seen in almost a year, with the average price in Los Angeles County now sitting at more than five and a half dollars per gallon, seemingly destined to break the six-dollar mark before very long.

The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in Los Angeles County rose today to its highest amount since Oct. 28, increasing 3.1 cents to $5.65.

The average price has risen 49 times in 54 days, increasing 67.4 cents, including 3.2 cents Thursday, according to figures from the AAA and Oil Price Information Service.

The average price rose 30 consecutive days, making it 19.1 cents more than one week ago, 39.2 cents higher than one month ago and 22.3 cents above what it was one year ago.

But for most California voters, isn’t this all good news? In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”

And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”

● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?

● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.

● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”

● “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”

In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden:  As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

So despite Biden claiming today that high gas prices are Putin’s fault, is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”

● Biden praises high gas prices as part of ‘incredible transition’ of the US economy away from fossil fuels.

● Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

● The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.

Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned

MEH. IT MIGHT BE CHANNELED THROUGH THE OBAMAS. BUT IT’S THE USUAL CABAL OF INTERNATIONALISTS AND WOULD-BE TECH LORDS:  Megyn Kelly says Obamas — not Biden — are really in charge: ‘Shadow puppet situation’.

JUST ONE OF MANY HEADLINES LIKE THIS: $278 billion and 170,600 jobs: How Biden’s landmark climate bill changed the economy.

The press jumped right on board the Biden cabal’s rebranding of the Inflation Reduction Act as a kind-of jobs-and-climate-change law. That tells me inflation is probably gearing back up as another trillion or two in funny money starts working its way through the economy.

Meanwhile: Not So Fast With The CPI Celebrations: Rents Are Surging Again And Back To Record Highs. “In other words, not only are surging commodities about to blow away hopes for moderation in headline CPI, but economists are once again dead wrong, and instead of looking at the moderation in YoY rents – which they correctly see as indicative of a slowdown in the CPI basket-heavy OER index – what they should be looking at is the real-time actual rental index, which has been rising for 6 months now and is about to take out all time highs at a time when the Fed is supposedly pausing its rate hikes and if anything, is already planning its next easing cycle.”

CRISES BY DESIGN: ‘Bidenomics’ Has Been A Disaster.

By the time the “American Rescue Plan” was passed, there was already too much money chasing too few goods. Tons of people warned about the consequences of dumping more money into the economy. Even when inflation began inching up, Biden dismissed it — “no serious economist” is “suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way,” he said. Democrats, of course, wanted to cram through a $5 trillion progressive agenda spending bill. So when inflation became a big non-transitory political problem, the Biden administration began arguing that more spending would help ease inflation.

Again, the vital to remember about “Bidenomics” is that it makes absolutely zero sense.

Only after inflation became a political issue did the Democrats rename “Build Back Better” the “Inflation Reduction Act.” It still contained all the historic spending, corporate welfare, price-fixing, and tax hikes, but, more importantly, it also still had absolutely nothing to do with mitigating inflation.

Let’s not forget that “Bidenomics” also helped initiate the highest gas prices in history. The president signed a slew of executive orders pausing government leases on public lands, shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, and stymieing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico over concocted “social cost of carbon” externalities, among other restrictions. Despite the uncertainty of the post-pandemic economy, all of this was done in the first weeks of his administration.

Gooder, and harder, America: The ghost of Milton Friedman is haunting President Biden.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

SERIOUS, BUT SHORT: We need a serious conversation about Joe Biden’s brain.

Although many journalists did a fine job this week highlighting the president’s apparent confusion regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the obvious follow-up question. Namely, “Is Biden okay?”

It’s not an unfair question, either, considering the Iraq/Ukraine gaffes were not an isolated series of incidents. They are simply the latest in a string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements from Biden in the much longer string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements that have come to define the Biden presidency.

“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” the president said this month during an address before the League of Conservation Voters.

There is no such plan, of course, to build a railroad from the Pacific coast to the Indian Ocean. According to his White House handlers, the president was referring to a plan that would connect railroads across the African continent, linking ports on the Atlantic Ocean to ports on the Indian Ocean. Atlantic, Pacific. Tomato, tomahto.

On June 19, the president promised to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and water by — the year of his inauguration?

“I’ve committed to — by 2020, we will have conserved 30 percent of all the lands and waters the United States has jurisdiction over and simultaneously reduce emissions to blunt climate impact,” he said.

No, Biden is not “okay.”

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.