Will the real Joe Biden please stand up?

Monday morning saw two new reports portraying President Joe Biden in striking contrast to his senile dotard image. These new reports portray him as a boss with a hair-trigger temper – and much smarter than most people think. But are these reports credible? Or are people misreading them?

Which is the real Joe Biden?

The new reports came out yesterday from Axios and the New York Post. Axios explicitly says the public and private faces of Joe Biden are strikingly different. In public, says author Alex Thompson, Biden whispers – but in private, he yells. Thompson allegedly talked to several current and former aides, all of whom have had the President yell at them or seen him yell at someone else. The usual messages in these rants, again according to Thompson roughly translate to:

• “How do you not know such-a-thing?”
• “Don’t try to lie to me/make excuses/whatever.”
• “Get out of my sight.”

“No one is safe,” one person on Biden’s staff supposedly said of his temperamental flares.

The troubling part – if this story is accurate – is this statement, attributed to former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.). Kaufman served as Biden’s chief of staff in his Senate years. Then, when Biden became Vice-President, Gov. Ruth Ann Minner (D-Del.) appointed him to serve in the Senate until Midterms 2010. (Chris Coons was elected to the Senate then.) The only other time Kaufman worked with Biden was as co-chairman of the Biden-Harris Transition Team. Still, some describe him as Biden’s “best friend.” And, speaking to Thompson at Axios, Kaufman said this:

If there is something that’s not in the brief, he’s going to find it. It’s not to embarrass people, it’s because he wants to get to the right decision. Most people who have worked for him like the fact that he challenges them and gets them to a better decision.

If that’s not boilerplate, or something Kaufman made up to make his friend look good, then it shows that the President knows far more than he lets on in public.

Can we believe it?

Jeff Connaughton, who was Ted Kaufman’s chief of staff during Kaufman’s brief time in the Senate, wrote about Biden’s temper in his 2012 book, The Payoff: Why Wall Street Still Wins. That was eleven years ago, but more recently he allegedly told Thompson that Biden was putting on an act.

He hides his sharper edge to promote his folksy Uncle Joe image — which is why, when flashes of anger break through, it seems so out of public character.

Josh Christenson at the New York Post quoted extensively from Thompson’s piece, then shared several tweets from both sides.

Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t believe this story:

Steve Cortes asked why anyone still thinks Biden is “a decent person.”

Two Republicans seemed to believe the report, but called it unflattering.

One user excused it as reflecting the stress of the job.

But one user on Telegram shared this insight:

Here’s a new story about this awful man. It confirms two very key things.

1.) This fact that “if something is not in the report he will find it,” proves, without question, his mental faculties remain acute, he is very aware of his surroundings and can identify and articulate minute portions and details of it. Hardly the image of a faltering old man, with memory problems, seeing people who aren’t there and confused, as he likes to portray.

2.) He is a mean, vicious, abuser of a bastard, quite competent, and puts his energies into humiliating, dominating, and abusing, those closest to him. Persons, like all persons, he should treat with dignity and respect. “Teaching moments” seized instead, to spout vitriol, and spew curses.

These are the actions of a monster, not a man. These narratives parallel the horrifying things, Miss Tara [Reade] and others, have so bravely tried to have addressed, and be protected from. Is it such a wonder, he spends so much time, and so many billions of taxpayer dollars, fueling a proxy war of hate, that has killed so many innocents? Or that he does so, with such callous and cold indifference?

I think not.

The story he shared was Fox News’ take on the Biden temper story.

The Presidential temper seems real enough, because the public has seen it before. He spoke a curse word into a “hot mic” once, in a visit to Florida. Consider also the time he said inflation was an asset – with choice words for Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy. Biden would insult Doocy again two months later.

Temperamental flare-ups can be a sign of dementia. Current and former caregivers of dementia patients have said so in the comment spaces at the Post and Fox.But how, then, to account for That Speech of September 1, 2022? He delivered that Ciceronian oration and barely missed a syllable.

Analysis

So: is Donald Trump Jr. right? Did Alex Thompson write and publish a show piece to cover for Biden’s lack of fitness for his office? (And how well does Ted Kaufman know Biden, if he hasn’t work for him officially for years?)

Or is Joe Biden smarter, and a more devilish planner, than anyone gives him credit for?

Or – and here’s a point perhaps many people missed – did Thompson merely reveal more symptoms of Biden’s dementia? By that theory the witnesses who credit the President with such great smarts, are fooling themselves.

Perhaps only one person knows for certain, and that is the First Lady of the United States. And she’s not telling.