Pun Salad

President Joe Biden’s conduct behind closed doors, in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in meetings around the world is described in the same dual way by those who regularly see him in action.

He is often sharp and focused. But he also has moments, particularly later in the evening, when his thoughts seem jumbled and he trails off mid-sentence or seems confused. Sometimes he doesn’t grasp the finer points of policy details. He occasionally forgets people’s names, stares blankly and moves slowly around the room.

Biden’s occasional struggles with focus may not be unusual for someone his age. But at 81 years old and seeking another four years in the White House, the moments when he’s off his game have taken on a fresh resonance following his disastrous debate performance against Republican Donald Trump. The president appeared pale, gave nonsensical answers, stared blankly and lost his train of thought.

Historians still debate why Biden didn’t step aside. Many think it was simply ego; he liked being president and didn’t want to give up power. Others think that when he started to receive criticism, he developed a pugnacious defiance that kept him from seeing reality. But most think that his decision was a product of the dementia itself. The signs that he could no longer win were overwhelming, and calls for him to step down were coming from every quarter. A younger Biden would have understood the situation, but 2024 Biden was delusional. The same misguided hubris that caused him to fail to realize that he would humiliate himself in a debate made him fail to realize that he would be beaten badly in the election. His attempt to prove that he was not diminished ultimately proved how badly diminished he was.

Whatever his reasons, the objective fact is that Biden stubbornly clung to the nomination even when it became clear that he was likely to lose to Trump and that most of his party wanted him replaced. His defeat cleared the way for one of the darkest presidencies in American history. Biden is remembered alongside leaders like Neville Chamberlain and Tsar Nicholas II, whose rank incompetence paved the way for something awful. To this day, the phrase “to Biden it” means to seize responsibility for something and then botch it badly. We don’t know what would have happened if Biden had decided not to run for a second term, but we can be sure that history would remember him very differently.

In January, I began hearing similar stories from Democratic officials, activists, and donors. All people who supported the president and were working to help reelect him to a second term in office. Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?

Uniformly, these people were of a similar social strata. They lived and socialized in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. They did not wish to come forward with their stories. They did not want to blow a whistle. They wished that they could whistle past what they knew and emerge in November victorious and relieved, having helped avoid another four years of Trump. What would happen after that? They couldn’t think that far ahead. Their worries were more immediate.

When they discussed what they knew, what they had seen, what they had heard, they literally whispered. They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record). They needed to know that they were not alone and not crazy. Things were bad, and they knew things were bad, and they knew others must also know things were bad, and yet they would need to pretend, outwardly, that things were fine. The president was fine. The election would be fine. They would be fine. To admit otherwise would mean jeopardizing the future of the country and, well, nobody wanted to be responsible personally or socially for that. Their disclosures often followed innocent questions: Have you seen the president lately? How does he seem? Often, they would answer with only silence, their eyes widening cartoonishly, their heads shaking back and forth. Or with disapproving sounds. “Phhhhwwwaahhh.” “Uggghhhhhhhhh.” “Bbbwwhhheeuuw.” Or with a simple, “Not good! Not good!” Or with an accusatory question of their own: “Have you seen him?!”

I think that the press helped to cover up Joe Biden’s condition, and that it did so as a matter of habit, out of a corrupt desire to help the Democratic Party. Some in the press strongly deny this. They insist that they didn’t know how bad it was. They say that they were as shocked as anyone by what they saw last Thursday night. They contend that they are not the perpetrators but the victims.

Okay, then. If that’s true, we ought to talk through its implications. If it’s true, then the press was duped — and duped by the federal government of the United States of America. If it’s true, then the executive branch has been engaged in a massive — and effective — conspiracy to keep Biden’s infirmity from the people who are supposed to report the news. If it’s true, then the White House fooled the media; it outwitted the media; it embarrassed the media. If it’s true, then the president and his political party colluded to suppress the ability of the sacred Fourth Estate to relay matters of public interest to the voters, and, in the process, it made a mockery of the First Amendment.

So . . . is the press gonna investigate that? It certainly sounds like a big story to me.