It seems even President Joe Biden’s allies in the media are finally acknowledging his deteriorating condition.
Politico ran a piece Wednesday titled, “Biden downplays age talk—but subtle accommodations are being made.”
The piece began with, “Everyone noticed the lack of socks.”
Yikes.
Politico noted how Biden walked across the tarmac to Air Force One on Sunday with no socks on.
“The informality of the president’s wardrobe distracted from something else—something reporters who travel with him have been noticing for some time,” Politico reported. “Biden boarded using the shorter set of retractable stairs that fold into the belly of the plane. The routine began a few months ago. The president increasingly avoiding the grander, more traditional doorway near the front of the aircraft on the main passenger level, higher above the tarmac.”
Apparently, the president now needs a special ladder to get into planes.
Of note is the line about how reporters who have traveled with the president have “noticed for some time” that the president has special accommodations.
If that’s so, why haven’t there been more tough questions about it from the press?
It says a lot about this administration that it is now booting reporters out of White House press briefings who might follow up with more aggressive questions about the president’s condition, including The Daily Signal’s own Fred Lucas.
Frankly, these new accommodations don’t sound subtle. Given Biden’s bizarre statements, peculiar behavior on live camera, and general signs of frailty, it’s fair to ask about who is really running the show in his own White House.
Is it his wife, his staff, the “deep state”?
Our noble, objective media trotted out “experts” calling for the 25th Amendment to be used to remove former President Donald Trump from office because he held tightly to a railing and drank water in a weird way.
Where are these speculations regarding Biden? Gone. Criticizing the president in any way is now ageist and hateful.
Thus, we see here the full cycle of American political life alongside how dissent goes from being the highest form of patriotism to treason, depending on what party is in the White House.
Regardless of media culpability in making excuses for Biden, it’s certainly concerning that the president seems mentally unwell on top of his general physical problems.
There have been a few other times in American history in which a president was effectively incapable of doing the job due to poor health. Most notably, the last stages of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency.
Wilson—who already had health problems before becoming president—became nearly incapacitated during his second term after suffering a stroke in 1919. The president’s staff hid him from the public eye and the first lady, Edith Wilson, ran the White House.
By the time of his physical and mental collapse, Wilson only had a short time left in his presidency. Remarkably, he considered running for a third term in 1920.
A few members of the press tried to give Wilson cover for their progressive champion.
“I saw Wilson transact the most important functions of his office with his old-time decisiveness, method, and keenness of intellectual appraisement,” New York Times reporter Louis Seibold wrote in a lengthy “interview” with the president that won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.
It was totally made up. The president could hardly get out of bed or write his own name. This fraud launched a now lengthy New York Times tradition of bogus Pulitzer Prize winners.
The truth was that Wilson was in no condition to run anything, and the Democratic Party pushed him aside for the younger, healthier Gov. James R. Cox of Ohio.
Might we see a repeat of 1920, where Democrats push the deteriorating incumbent aside for a younger, healthier alternative?
Biden ran a basement campaign in 2020 with the excuse of the COVID-19 pandemic. He dodged the rigorous campaign trail, and his staff limited his public appearances.
It’s going to be tough to replicate that now that the pandemic is long gone.
Still, Biden seems to generally be the best chance for Democrats to win, and many partisan Democrats are just fine with Biden being a figurehead of the regime regardless of how he behaves.
Are voters OK with this setup in general? That’s the real question.
Perhaps Democrats are so secure in their grip over the federal government that they feel they don’t even need to bother hiding Biden’s physical and mental ailments. So, we might get something akin to the last “Star Wars” prequel movie when the emperor trots out in front of the Senate with his grotesque face and black robe to announce the end of the republic and beginning of the empire.
A chilling thought, but to assume the death of the republic is probably premature.
“Ultimately, there’s no real way to obscure how the rigors of the world’s most demanding job are affecting the oldest person to ever hold it,” Politico noted about Biden’s accommodations.
True.
That’s likely the real reason why they are letting the obvious slip through. It makes one think that Biden’s condition is far worse than the White House is letting on and that Democrats are at least a bit nervous about 2024.
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