Biden can no longer hide from the appalling truth about his irresponsible presidency
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Many of us had suspected it, but now we appear to have proof: Joe Biden’s presidency is an irresponsible con, perpetrated against the free world.
Concerns about the US president’s suitability for office have been raised ever since he ran for the White House back in 2020. You didn’t need to be a doctor to read the signs. He could be unsteady on his feet; he often didn’t seem to remember things clearly; he kept on fluffing his words. He was an old 77.
Anyone who pointed this out at the time, however, was accused of politically-motivated ageism. Because much of the criticism was coming from his political opponents, the notion that he wasn’t up to being president was dismissed as a smear campaign.
The US establishment media largely turned a blind eye to Biden’s obvious deficiencies because they didn’t want Donald Trump to occupy the Oval Office for another four years. They glossed over Biden’s occasional incoherence and ineptitude because “no one could be worse” than the orange neanderthal who had pledged to Make America Great Again.
Big tech was accused of joining in the effort to back Biden at all costs by burying a New York Post story about his son Hunter’s laptop, a story which contained serious allegations against Hunter. The virtual censorship was so effective that very few journalists followed up the exclusive.
During the last presidential campaign, Biden’s team sought to shield him from too much exposure, made easier by the fact a pandemic was on. And following his entry into the White House in January 2021, he has spent much of his presidency bungling through occasional press conferences with very little pushback from the anyone-but-Trump reporters who had conspired to propel him to power.
Drunk on the “vindication” of the January 6 Capitol riots, they appeared to take the insurrection as evidence not only of Trump’s unfitness for office – but also Biden’s supposed suitability.
Yet time and again, he has proved them wrong, not just with hapless public appearances but actual policy. Remember July 2021, when Biden assured the nation – and indeed the world – that, following the withdrawal of American troops there would be absolutely no collapse of the Afghan army or government? He even made a reference to Vietnam, insisting that there would be no Saigon-like airlifting from the roof of the US embassy. Look at how that turned out.
Such was the president’s belligerence, built on years of being falsely lauded as the saviour of civilised society, that he refused to take any questions after everything went pear-shaped in Kabul.
Yet at 81, and seemingly more confused than ever, there is now no hiding Biden’s obvious lack of mental acuity – by either the press or public.
Last May, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 32 per cent of respondents believed Biden had the “mental sharpness” to be effective in the White House. Fast forward to this week, and a NBC News poll found that three-quarters of voters (76 per cent), including half of Democrats, say they now have concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health.
It is perhaps worth noting that this survey was conducted before America was privy to a report by special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s storage of classified documents. Hur said that he did not think Biden should be prosecuted over secret papers that were discovered in his garage – but questioned “significant limitations in his memory”.
In interviews with Hur’s office, Biden “did not remember when he was vice president”, asking in two separate and alarming instances “if it was 2013 – when did I stop being vice president?” and “in 2009, am I still vice president?” “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him,” noted Hur.
Concluding that jurors could have been persuaded that Biden didn’t return those materials because he forgot he had them in his house, Hur wrote: “[At] trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” But if Biden is too elderly and forgetful to stand trial, what makes him fit to be president, either now or in the future?
This unvarnished truth has been spelt out by a neutral arbiter – not by someone politically partisan. Yet still the attempted cover-up continues. Hur has now been accused of “trashing” the subject of an investigation “with extraneous, unfounded and irrelevant critical commentary”.
Clearly Biden’s people did not want this information to be made public. But the truth of the matter is that just as it was irresponsible to put Biden into office, so too is it irresponsible to keep him there.
Not just irresponsible, but irrational. Asked on Thursday why he was running again, Biden arrogantly replied: “I’m the most qualified person in this country to be President of the United States and finish the job I started.” These do not seem to be the words of a man in touch with reality.
At the same press conference, we had to endure the spectacle of the leader of the free world defending himself against claims his memory isn’t what it once was, while going on to refer to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the “president of Mexico”. It came after he also apparently forgot the name of Hamas and confused French president Emmanuel Macron and former German chancellor Angela Merkel for their dead predecessors.
It would be fine if this were an episode of Veep, the US equivalent of The Thick of It, but this is a real-life president whose actions and decisions have real-life consequences.
Moreover, this is arguably the most precarious period in world affairs since the end of the Cold War. The main takeaway from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin this week is that the Russian leader is completely unhinged. The Middle East could yet boil over into a much more serious conflict. And China continues to threaten Taiwan. Meanwhile, Western economies are facing a fragile future, with growth forecasts looking depressingly weak.
Is Biden fit for a second term? Almost certainly not. Is he fit to be president now? Perhaps not. If the Democrats had any sense, they would gently encourage him not to run again and start immediate work on finding a more credible replacement than Kamala Harris, which, let’s face it, really shouldn’t be that difficult.
Indeed, if they hadn’t spent so much of the past few years finding ways to stop Trump being re-elected, they might actually have come up with a viable Democratic alternative. Instead, they’ve allowed Biden to so demean and diminish himself that Trump looks positively competent by comparison.
