11 Jan The Missing President

“Those who ran America for the past four years were the group of ‘counselors’ Joe Biden appointed in 2020, each of whom remained in a position-of-power throughout the Biden Presidency.” – The Lonely Realist

A recent Peggy Noonan article in the Wall Street Journal, “The President Who Wasn’t There,” focused on the similarity of “health issues” between the Joe Biden and Woodrow Wilson Presidencies. To TLR, those superficial similarities ignore both deep differences and decidedly different cover-ups. Wilson had a stroke in his last year in office which his wife covered up. Joe Biden has been in apparent decline since his earliest days as President. Cabinet officials, members of Congress and senior Administration officials coordinated a cover-up of President Biden’s incapacities. In doing so, they violated their obligations to the American public. Their efforts were part of an organized conspiracy that no prior Presidency, including Wilson’s, experienced.

As Ms. Noonan wrote, “President [Biden] has been in apparent cognitive decline for some years, perhaps since before taking office, and wasn’t fully up to the job,” a conclusion supported by recent disturbing disclosures about the Biden years and by President Biden’s disastrous June 27^th debate performance. They are documented in an earlier WSJ article in which journalists “spoke to nearly 50 people in and around the presidency [about] how the White House adapted to the needs of ‘a diminished leader.’” Ms. Noonan’s conclusion is that the President “was too old to function as a fully engaged and hands-on president,” a mild indictment given the severity of President Biden’s now-documented disengagement. More significantly, it ignores the complicity of the “50 people in and around the presidency” who discussed that disengagement with reporters, and by a host of other Cabinet- and Congress-members who had knowledge of the President’s infirmities and ignored their sworn obligation to uphold the Constitution. They were in a position to act by simply going public. None did.

The multi-year conspiracy to cover up the President’s incapacities exceeds in duration and scope any other Presidential “medical problem,” including Wilson’s, Ronald Reagan’s and FDR’s. The analogy to Wilson therefore is inapt. Wilson did not become incapacitated until almost three years into his second term, when he suffered a stroke. Wilson’s disabilities were covered up by his wife and closest aides in an era and for a period of time when they believed that doing otherwise would create greater difficulties – and during an era when there was no 25^th Amendment. Biden’s “medical issues” began far earlier, were knowingly covered up not only by his Cabinet and aides but also by members of Congress, and were covered up for years during which there existed Constitutional measures that were specifically designed to address such a problem. President Wilson’s 1 year of incapacity differs markedly from President Biden’s >3 years of decline.

As TLR pointedly observed some time ago, “The job of President requires not only hiring and motivating the best and the brightest, but also firing those who fail to perform at the highest levels. Despite Cabinet-level policy and execution failures in Afghanistan, the Middle East and the southern border, not one of President Biden’s Cabinet members or advisers has been fired. As NBC News reported, ‘The absence of turnover among the Biden appointees – whose jobs include stopping crime, keeping food safe and guarding against attack – is a rarity.’” The explanation for that “rarity” is clear – those appointees were running America. They had no interest in yielding their power…, and President Biden was incapable of relieving them of their authority (especially since doing so would have risked exposure of his “medical issues”). Joe Biden’s appointees, Administration officials, and members of Congress covered it up. The scandal is not that Joe Biden had “medical issues.” What’s scandalous is that so many government officials conspired to cover up those issues.

Joe Biden barely campaigned in 2020. The COVID pandemic allowed him to remain in his basement, shielding what might have been revealed by public electioneering. Special counsel Robert Hur’s 345-page report on Biden’s retention of classified documents concluded that President Biden should not be prosecuted for having classified documents in his home because a jury was likely to view him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory,” and the transcript of Hur’s Fall 2023 interview of President Biden clearly evidences the President’s “faulty memory.” Being a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man” with a “faulty memory” is a disqualification for the most important, most powerful position on Earth. The only government officials who commented on Hur’s report denounced it as untrue and Hur as a partisan hack. The public can only guess when President Biden’s deterioration first became clear to those same people, a date certainly well before Hur’s interview. The fact that the President held only 3 full Cabinet meetings in 2021, 2 in 2022 and 3 in 2023, contrasting sharply with Cabinet meetings held by prior Presidents, suggests that his deterioration was apparent early in his term. Hiding a President’s deteriorating mental condition is not a crime. It does, however, raise serious ethical and Constitutional concerns.

TLR sees no upside in taking legal action against those who conspired, or who aided and abetted in conspiring, in the cover-up of Joe Biden’s “health issues.” Historians will judge their culpability. However, Congressional leaders who coordinated the cover-up had the clearest responsibility to speak out or take action. They did not do so and those remaining in office should be brought to account by their colleagues as a warning that more serious action will be taken by Congress against those who in the future shirk their duties. The message from Congress should be clear: “We will not tolerate this happening again.”

Finally (from a good friend)