Unlike you-know-who, Joe Biden did not shirk his D-Day duties last Thursday. But was he really there? The videos suggest he was not.
At one of the main ceremonies, the 81-year-old commander-in-chief tried to sit down at the wrong time and then changed his mind.
His wife, First Lady Jill, put her hand over her mouth to whisper something urgent to her sick husband, but to no avail. The Leader of the Free World remained motionless, locked in a semi-crouch, for several excruciating seconds.
It was just one of several serious moments throughout the day. As French President Emmanuel Macron joyfully greeted the veteran heroes, Jill pulled her husband out by the hand. And when Joe had a chance to sit up, he seemed to fall asleep.
Donald Trump’s son Donald Jnr wasted no time in calling Biden “a disgrace” and while no decent person should make fun of the elderly, it’s hard to disagree.
Unlike you-know-who, Joe Biden did not shirk his D-Day duties last Thursday.
On Monday, Biden followed up with another painful senile episode. Celebrating Juneteenth, the ultra-woke federal holiday he enacted to celebrate the end of slavery, she seemed to freeze once again, her gaze a million miles away for several terrifying seconds as people danced to each other. your surroundings.
It’s all so uncomfortable. The President has spent three years suffering these humiliations on the world stage, and he is only getting worse. His campaign team often accuses his enemies of manipulating images to make him look gagaer than he is. But there’s no denying that Joe gives them a lot of humiliating material to work with.
Worse yet, as November 5, presidential election day, approaches and his schedule inevitably becomes more grueling, the president’s decline appears to be rapidly accelerating at the wrong time.
As a result, his re-election campaign is becoming increasingly unpleasant to watch. He is now experiencing what Shakespeare called “the second childishness and mere forgetfulness” that accompany a man’s later years.
According to White House doctors, Biden suffers from “significant spinal arthritis,” which increasingly impedes his movements. That’s why she wears thick-soled black sneakers to improve her mobility. It’s also why Biden’s handlers are desperate to minimize the amount of time the president is seen moving alone.
His press conferences are strictly organized and the White House now has a public relations protocol under which several members of the president’s entourage walk as slowly as they can alongside him as he shuffles glacially across the lawn between the White House and Marine One, the presidential helicopter. The idea is to stop even more images of his blatant clumsiness.
Of course, physical disadvantages don’t have to detract from great leadership. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in charge when the Allied forces stormed those French beaches 80 years ago, had suffered from polio and used a wheelchair, and today no one would question his ability to lead.
But Biden’s health problems also appear to be mental. He can’t appear in public without looking lost. His childhood stuttering, which he managed to overcome when he was younger, seems to have returned with a vengeance in his twilight years. The First Lady now appears to be effectively taking on the role of First Caretaker, frequently guiding her confused husband during her public appearances.
Joe Biden reacts to comedian and actor Roy Wood, Jr. during a June 16 concert on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington in June 2024.
Even Biden’s allies have stopped trying to hide their concerns. Last week, in a major violation of omerta in Democratic circles on the issue of Biden’s health, high-level sources close to the president revealed that yes, Biden does show his age in meetings. This confirms what Republicans who have dealt with him in recent months allege. In January, at a congressional meeting on national security and Ukraine, it was alleged that Biden spoke so weakly that people had trouble hearing him, stopped absentmindedly mid-sentence, and closed his eyes for so long that attendees feared he would become distracted. I would have fallen asleep.
Polls suggest that only four in 10 Americans are confident that Biden can even remember his own age, while only one in three believe he can fully digest national security briefings. This widespread perception of Biden’s weakness is understood as one of the main reasons why, according to electoral polls, Donald Trump will defeat him in November.
It’s not just Biden’s public appearances that make voters think he’s not up to the job. As her mind wanders, it becomes clear that her administration is increasingly run by her cabinet and high-ranking members of her team.
His first Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, was often said to be the real power man in the White House, and many believe his replacement, Jeff Zients, is now quietly filling the same role. It is also rumored that as conflicts spread from Gaza to Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are calling the shots.
Joe Biden is helped up after falling during the graduation ceremony at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado on June 1, 2023.
It is becoming almost impossible for the Biden team to deny reality. In February, special counsel Robert Hur announced that Biden could not be held responsible for mishandling classified files – a crime for which Donald Trump has been charged – because the current president was “an old man with a bad memory.”
Democrats responded by calling Hur a Republican plant: Vice President Kamala Harris said his report was “clearly politically motivated.” But the fact is, because of his age, Biden was not prosecuted for committing the same crime as Donald Trump, the 78-year-old in this year’s gerontocratic election.
It is a problem that has been brewing for a long time.
In 1988, Biden suffered two brain aneurysms. Her surgeon later said that, as a result, she showed no signs of cognitive decline.
However, some say Biden’s traumatic personal life has impacted his health. The president’s first wife, Neilia Hunter, and her 13-month-old daughter Naomi, died in a car accident in 1972. Her son Beau died of a glioblastoma brain tumor in 2015.
And just yesterday it was announced that his surviving son, Hunter, faces 25 years in prison (and another trial for tax crimes) after being found guilty of lying about illegal drug use when he purchased a gun in 2018.
Biden has always made excruciating statements in public (as a fit young senator he was known as “the gaffe machine”), but his many friends in Washington tended to downplay his mistakes and verbal gaffes. However, rumors of his mental deterioration (and a conspiracy of silence to cover it up) have grown stronger as the years go by.
During his successful bid to win the White House in 2020, his staff played loud music while mingling with the crowd, apparently to drown out any troubling conversations their candidate might be having. The Covid pandemic also greatly helped Biden’s candidacy, as the shutdowns allowed him to conduct much of the campaign from his basement in Delaware.
Biden listens to speakers during the World Leaders Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021.
Petty commentators enjoy suggesting that Biden is “enriched” for special occasions, i.e. supplied with a cocktail of drugs by his medical team. That is said to explain why he often sounds angry on stage. On Monday, for example, the Republican attack machine began spreading images of him on social media drinking a peculiarly colored liquid from a plastic bottle, much like a drugged tennis player between matches.
“This mysterious orange drink is the only thing keeping corrupt Joe Biden from falling into a deep sleep,” the Republican National Committee tweeted.
But if Biden has been getting high this week, it doesn’t seem to have helped. That same night, he was slurring his words incoherently from the teleprompter. “Since the founding of our ideals we do not fully know what American soil is,” she said gnomically.
The truth is, like most 80-year-olds, Biden has good days and bad days. Democrats’ concern is that as the campaign heats up this summer, he will suffer more of the latter.
Some insiders still whisper that by the time the Democratic National Committee arrives in Chicago in August, Biden will be so weak that the party will discard him in favor of a younger, smarter alternative. One problem with that theory is that the natural replacement would be Kamala Harris, who has performed terribly as ‘vice president’ and consistently polls worse than him.
Biden rubs his eyes during COP26 World Leaders Summit in Glasgow
It is also unclear how Biden could be pressured to resign, given that, for all his lapses, he shows no inclination to do so. Insiders say Jill Biden would be the only person who could persuade the president that enough is enough, but for now she also seems convinced that the show must go on.
You can’t succeed on the front lines of American politics for five decades without a certain stubbornness, and Biden is well known for his “grit.” In the Obama years, he often became angry at not being treated with enough respect. “My manhood is non-negotiable,” he reportedly said in 2008 when he was talking about how much power he should have in office.
That macho pride remains intact and may be the characteristic he clings to most as his faculties fade.
Many Americans say they are terrified of what ‘Donald’ might do in a second term. But when the alternative is four more years of an increasingly crazier Joe Biden, it’s no surprise that Trump appears to be on track (barring some divine intervention) to win again in 2024.
Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator.