Constitution
Biden is no leader
Special Counsel Robert Hur, perhaps in trying to let Biden off easily, made it official: Biden cannot lead.
The end of last week saw revelations about Joe Biden’s ability – or lack thereof – to discharge the powers and duties of the Presidency, that none can deny any longer. His staff, and tame reporters and editors, have surely known of his failings since the 2020 campaign. Now a special counsel, originally tasked to investigate Biden’s own classified documents retention scandal, has issued a shocking report. Moreover, Biden’s subsequent efforts to dispute the report’s key finding, only made that finding more obvious. This goes beyond selective application of justice, though this drama includes that, too. It shows that a flawed electoral process placed a senile dotard in the White House. (And handed him the Nuclear Codes!) But no one wants to act against him – because his replacement would be worse.
The Biden classified documents scandal
For more than a year, the country has known that Joe Biden took classified documents from various terms of office. With the finding of a second, then a third, cache of documents, a disturbing picture emerged. In various places, including the garage of his son’s Delaware residence and at a university off-campus office, Joe Biden was storing documents left over from his days as a Senator from Delaware and as Vice-President during the Barack Obama administration. Ultimately, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as Special Counsel, to investigate. As House Republicans started launching investigations, Democrats adopted a defensive posture – though it almost fell apart, but not quite.
On Thursday, February 8, Special Counsel Hur filed his 345-page report. Hur found that Biden “willfully retained” these documents, which he smuggled out of at least one Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Biden retained these at four known locations:
- The Penn Biden Center (University of Pennsylvania),
- A garage in his Delaware residence,
- Another residence in Virginia, and
- The law office of his lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts.
Not only that, but Biden was very careless in his storage and handling of the documents. Christina Laila of The Gateway Pundit has damning photographs.
But the report did not recommend charging Biden with anything. Why not? Because:
We have also considered that, 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. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.
How poor was his memory? He couldn’t even remember the years he served as Vice-President, or when his son Beau died. Washington Post reporter Matt Viser shared this:
Sharing of documents – and a disastrous press conference
The special counsel’s office also knows Biden shared the contents of some of those documents with a ghostwriter. When a reporter asked him about that late Thursday night, he screamed a denial of it.
That ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, deleted the audio files of his recorded interviews with the President. He did so after learning of Robert Hur’s appointment. But he did not succeed; technicians recovered the deleted files anyway. He will not face charges, by reason of “insufficient evidence.” (Laila’s report shows that he did cooperate, at least to some extent.)
As may be, Biden’s handlers made a major mistake. They scheduled a press conference and let him host it. They even scheduled it to compete with the release of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. But this caused two problems. First, anyone switching back-and-forth between Biden’s address and Putin’s interview would see a stark contrast not flattering to Biden. The contrast was between the sharp, confident Putin and the obviously feeble Biden.
The second problem was worse. Biden made a thorough mess of his appearance, by almost all accounts. A reporter asked him about his age and mental acuity, and the President blew his stack.
In fact he had blown his stack before – in private, with several of his fellow partisans. But he evidently couldn’t control himself at the press conference. At first he tried to parry the questions with snark:
I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing and I’m the president and I put this country back on its feet…
My memory is so bad, I let you speak.
Then he said this:
That is YOUR JUDGMENT! That is YOUR JUDGMENT! That is NOT the judgment of the press!
Confusing his heads of state
Even if he hadn’t lost his temper, he still could never defend confusing the heads of state of Egypt and Mexico.
He correctly named the President of Egypt, and correctly identified the hazard and a key border town in Gaza. But he misidentified the country. Later that night, CNN tried to defend Biden by saying he “just misspoke.”
The problem is that no one has ever given Donald Trump comparable consideration for misspeaking or misspelling.
At MSNBC, a panel discussing Robert Hur’s report erupted in fury, accusing Hur of “derogatory, partisan cheap shots” at Biden.
That night the first calls rang out, from Republican Representatives and conservative commentators, to invoke Amendment XXV, Section 4.
The problem is, Vice-President Kamala Harris, who would become Acting President, is no better. Her own mental acuity is in doubt.
Because now, what people perhaps had never seen before can be seen to know what’s possible. But the brilliance of this inaugural class and its leaders is the ability to see what can be unburdened by what has been, and then to make it. Kamala Harris
This is only the latest example. Nevertheless, Joe Biden showed worse signs of mental decline on Friday (February 9), in an Oval Office meeting with the German Chancellor.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) is not letting this matter rest, either.
Newt Gingrich said it’s no longer safe to have Biden as President.
Even Democrats worry about Biden
Even Democrats worry that Biden not only can’t handle the office, but will bring the ticket down this fall. The Daily Mail reported a movement to substitute another candidate at the Democratic National Convention in August. Michelle Obama and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) have borne mention as possible replacements. So has Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.). David Axelrod, formerly of the Obama administration, expressed similar concerns to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. And in the worst falling-out yet, CNN gave the lie to several statements Biden made about the security of those classified documents.
Sunny Hostin of The View also suggested substituting Newsom for Biden.
No one is yet saying how to do it, only that the Democrats must do it.
Yesterday afternoon, a report surfaced showing a falling-out between Biden and Attorney General Garland. The President has always been upset that his rival, Donald Trump, is not already in prison as a convict.
But now Biden resents Garland not “demanding edits” to the Hur report. If by some chance the President wins reelection, Merrick Garland might no longer be Attorney General.
Apparently the President has one friend remaining on Capitol Hill: Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Romney evidently sees nothing wrong with Biden’s actions or his performance. That could be because the Senator has seen fit to blame recalcitrant fellow Republican Senators for not passing the McConnell-Schumer-Lankford Border Bill.
Be careful what you wish for
Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics tartly observed that the Democrats have brought this trouble on themselves. In Donald Trump’s final year, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced a bill to establish a permanent Commission on Presidential Inability. Thus Congress would “by law provide” an alternative to the President’s Cabinet to sign off on a Vice-Presidential inability declaration. At the time, everyone suspected the Democrats of trying to get rid of Trump this way. Contributor Linda Goudsmit knew better.
Pelosi is not talking about removing President Trump. This is the Pelosi Plan to sneak radical leftist Kamala Harris into the oval office. Artful dodger Nancy Pelosi’s deceitful Bypass Plan is to get demented Joe Biden over the finish line with the help of the colluding globalist mainstream media, and then swear in radical leftist Kamala Harris as president of the United States.
Of course, Nancy Pelosi is no longer in House leadership – and everyone knows that Kamala Harris is even less composed. The falling-out with Merrick Garland could spread to other Cabinet officers. Even without that, Biden’s direct handlers would have him contest any such declaration. Congress would require two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers to sustain the declaration in that event. And everyone knows they would be trading in a senile dotard for a drug-addled – or just plain raving – maniac.
Substituting another candidate at the Convention will be far easier. What might not be so easy is convincing the voters – now outraged after three years of disastrous policies – that a President Newsom or Whitmer or a President Mrs. Obama would be any better. None of those three has expressed any significant policy differences with this President (or the Censorship Industrial Complex).
The real person waiting in the wings is Donald Trump. Who, now that his enemies are about to turn on one another, should sit back and watch.
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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