We are in the worst Constitutional crisis of my lifetime. Watergate (Nixon continuing to serve after losing the consent of the people) was bad, but this is max level danger for America. We don't have a government. PG 4 CGR
PJ Media, July 22, 2024. Where's Joe? Do we have a Prez, a government? Is Hunter our president? What would happen in a national emergency. Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday afternoon. Everyone saw his post on X. In a follow-up message on X, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential nomination, and Democrat leaders began lining up (with the notable exception of Barack Obama) to endorse her. The controversy over Biden’s dementia and ability to perform the duties of president appears to be over, although the nagging and quite large issue remains of whether he is able to perform the duties of president for the next seven months. And yet almost immediately, questions about the way Biden withdrew began to swirl, including the basic one: did he really withdraw at all?
The rumors began with the form of Biden’s withdrawal from the race. On Sunday at 1:46 p.m. EDT, the Joe Biden X account published an image of a letter in which Joe states that “it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” It was a splendid 21st-century moment that Biden announced his own political demise on a social media platform, but it also raised questions, chief of which was: “Where’s Joe?”
There are rough precedents for what Biden did on Sunday afternoon. When President Lyndon Johnson saw the writing on the wall and decided not to seek reelection in 1968, he did so in a nationally televised address. When President Richard Nixon resigned the office in 1974, he also did so on camera. But the public has not seen Biden since he was announced as having come down with COVID last Wednesday and retired to his taxpayer-funded walled Delaware beach house.
Shouldn’t Biden have made such a momentous announcement before the cameras? If he is too ill to do so, couldn’t we at the very least have some still photos that make it clear that this is a decision he has actually made? After all, he was insisting right up until quite recently that he was planning to stay in the race and win. There is an uneasy banana-republic coup feel to this whole thing. A president whose own base has turned against him comes down with a disease that many have noted has all the strength of the common cold at this point. Nevertheless, he treats it as if he had gotten the bubonic plague and immediately goes out of sight. Several days later comes the announcement, ostensibly under his name, that he is bowing out.
Add to the mix the fact that this unwanted president is suffering from dementia. Many have made the joke since Sunday afternoon: When Joe wakes up from his nap and hears about this, he sure is gonna be mad… It’s funny, but it also has a sharp edge. Does Biden even know that this is happening? Is he so far gone at this point that he has to be kept under wraps while others, presumably the people who have been running this administration from the beginning, make decisions in his name? That wouldn’t be too different from how things have been going, but up until now, Biden has, however ineptly, been performing his duties as the front man. Now, for his most important announcement of this election campaign, he is nowhere in sight and all we get is a letter on X?
And then there is that letter. It’s on the stationery of “Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,” not of The White House. Maybe that has a simple enough explanation: this is a campaign matter, not a presidential matter, and so Biden, ever scrupulous to obey the rules (ha!), inserted the proper paper into his printer. Others, however, have pointed out that the signature on the letter diverges in several ways from how Biden has signed his name in the past. This administration, however, with its constant lying and spinning, along with its craven efforts to compel social media giants to silence dissidents, has invited that kind of speculation. The Democrats need to come clean. Above all, as unpleasant an experience as it is, we need to see the man and hear him say that he has left the race. Otherwise, the questions that have been circulating for years become all the more insistent: can Biden really serve until Jan. 20? Who exactly is president now? If we don’t get answers, America has just taken another step toward becoming a change president through coups banana republic, where opposition leaders are convicted of bogus crimes and shot at, and unwanted leaders are disposed of out of sight, with flimsy excuses — and if you ask questions, you disappear too. Biden must resign, and do it on television
Federalist, July 22, 2024. 25th amendment must be invoked if Biden does not resign. In announcing he would no longer be the Democrats’ presidential candidate on Sunday, Joe Biden professed he was doing so because he believed it “in the best interest of [his] party and the country.” While Biden did not elaborate further on his reasoning, he promised to address the country later this week with more details about his decision.
When he eventually addresses the nation, Biden will likely portray himself as a modern-day hero, withdrawing from the race to protect America from the existential threat of Donald Trump. Whether Biden mentions his horrible debate performance remains to be seen, but if he does, the president will surely frame the spectacle as he has over the last three weeks: as a mistake, a bad night, or caused by jet lag or by Trump’s off-mic interruptions. Left unsaid will be the fact that party insiders and Democrat mega-donors forced Biden to step down out of fear Trump would win the presidency again.
These reasons, however, are all misdirection, seeking to distract the country from what they witnessed during the debate: a commander-in-chief suffering from a mental incapacity.
Yes, the public spectacle of the president’s cognitive impairment prompted Democrats to conclude Biden could not win reelection, and the conclusion that Biden could not win reelection led to his withdrawal from the race. But why Biden bowed out as the Democrat candidate — or why Biden or others claim he did — isn’t significant.
Instead, what matters is that Biden lacks a stable mental capacity. That matters because a man lacking in lucidity, even if only at times, cannot discharge the powers and duties of the office of president. As I wrote after the debate, “Whether caused by age, dementia, or Alzheimer’s matters not. The president of the United States cannot discharge his duties if he lacks lucidity for even a fraction of the day. The commander-in-chief must be able to command the executive branch 24-7.”
Biden’s withdrawal as a candidate is not enough; he must resign from the presidency, or the cabinet must invoke the 25th Amendment.
Democrats and their media lapdogs may pretend otherwise, acting as if Biden merely lacks the stamina to campaign and that his frailty does not affect his ability to serve as commander-in-chief. But during the debate, Biden wasn’t lacking in vigor. He was lacking in lucidity.
Soon after the debate, big-time Democrat booster George Clooney confirmed Biden’s mental incapacity by announcing that the man he saw at a June fundraiser “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” Speaking of the debate, Clooney told Democrat Party leaders in his New York Times op-ed to stop saying “that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.”
Yet Democrats — including Joe Biden — and the media will pretend the country only witnessed a frail elderly man. Not so.
During the debate, Biden unmistakably showed he was lacking in mental competency. That disturbing performance confirmed the numerous earlier instances in which Americans saw a cognitively challenged president.
Add to those facts Special Counsel Robert Hur’s conclusion that 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.” Hur’s report further detailed Biden’s shocking memory lapses and recommended against charging the president for mishandling classified documents. And Attorney General Merrick Garland’s refusal to release the audio recording of Hur’s interviews with Biden only cements the perception that the tape is even worse than the special counsel portrayed.
Notwithstanding the press’s initial coverage of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the media didn’t find journalism. Now, with the president out of the race, reporters will revert to covering for him. Americans, though, know the truth — that President Biden is mentally incapacitated. So do our enemies.
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