Biden – His Time
Former President Barack Obama (2008-2016) famously observed of his Veep:
Never underestimate Joe’s ability to screw up.
Commander-in-Chief and current US President Joe Biden has never had a greater opportunity to screw up (everybody and everything).
Woken-Token-Jokin’-Chokin’ Joe
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Meet Sleepy Joe and Kamala – the Lord and Lady Gaga of politics
Not for the first time, Joe Biden was late for his own press conference. Before he got round to Afghanistan, he wanted to deliver an update on his administration’s response to Tropical Storm Henri, which had earlier made landfall in Rhode Island. The President had just been briefed by the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. ‘I can’t think of anyone better to lead this operation than, er, um, er . . . ’ he mumbled, as he hastily consulted his notes. Biden couldn’t even remember the name of the woman in charge of FEMA, someone he had been speaking to just a couple of minutes earlier. Not only that, she was sitting in front of him. Millions of television viewers saw Sleepy Joe experience yet another embarrassing senior moment.
This latest lapse of memory was reminiscent of the scene during a presidential visit to a Michigan farm shop recently. The female assistant behind the ice cream counter asked him a fairly straightforward question about Russian cyber hacking. A baffled Biden had to reach into his jacket pocket and fish out a fistful of cue cards before he could read his answer. While conservative news outlets such as Fox made fun of the President, the overwhelmingly pro-Democrat mainstream media gave him a free pass.
But now, as I wrote here last Tuesday, even the patience of anti-Trump TV channels and newspapers has evaporated. Since the fall of Kabul, Biden has come under attack from both sides of the political divide. His fitness for office is being openly questioned.
It’s not only card-carrying Republicans calling for his resignation, although there are plenty of them around right now. Perhaps the most prominent, and best qualified, is Texas congressman Ronny Jackson. A retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, Jackson was appointed to the White House medical unit by George W. Bush and served as official physician to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Back in October last year, during the presidential election campaign, Jackson stated publicly about Biden: ‘I am concerned that he does not have the mental capacity, the cognitive ability, to serve as our commander-in-chief and head of state. ’After Biden’s initial bumbling response to the Taliban takeover, Jackson tweeted: ‘If he’s not mentally capable of handling this crisis, he needs to resign IMMEDIATELY.’
Fourteen Republican members of Congress have written an open letter demanding that Biden takes a formal cognitive ability test, which Trump passed in 2018 after the Democrats accused him of senility. The President is refusing, presumably because his close associates aren’t even confident that he can remember his own name these days. Biden’s overall approval ratings have now fallen below 50 per cent, which is par for the course in a country which remains bitterly divided. More significant was an NBC News poll showing that six out of ten think he’s screwed up in Afghanistan.
Over the past week, I’ve spoken to Americans from all walks of life and political affiliations, including a former marine who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, and an ex-New York fireman who took part in the Twin Towers rescue and lost two close friends on 9/11. However they voted last year, and no matter how badly they wanted the troops out of Afghanistan, they have all been fiercely critical of the manner of America’s chaotic withdrawal. That the world’s foremost military superpower has been humbled by a bunch of cavemen with AK47s is a source of abiding shame.
Whichever way Biden and his few remaining apologists try to paint it, there’s no escaping the fact that the scuttle from Kabul is a humiliating defeat. The Taliban is now dictating terms. American citizens stranded in Afghanistan can’t even get through to the airport. Meanwhile, Biden’s critics can’t avoid contrasting the siege of Kabul airport with the ease with which millions of illegal immigrants are able to flood across America’s southern border. The anger and bewilderment has been reflected by former Biden cheerleaders in the Left-leaning American media, who have been unable to conceal their disappointment in the President and his administration.
Biden’s betrayal of all those who have fought, died or have been gravely wounded in Afghanistan has been compounded by him leaving America’s allies — primarily the British military — high and dry. Boris Johnson will try to talk him round in a Zoom call today but is probably on a hiding to nothing. Despite declaring that America was back on the world stage, Biden has walked away. The former marine I spoke to is not alone in wondering whether the sacrifice of the past 20 years was worth it. The biggest worry for Americans now is that there’s still at least three and a half years of the Biden presidency. Millions of people agree with physician Ronny Jackson’s diagnosis. What they see on their TV screens is a decrepit 78-year-old President seemingly in the advanced stages of senile dementia. When I watched his shambolic press conference on Sunday, the tune ringing in my head was the 1966 novelty hit by Napoleon XIV: They’re coming to take me away, Ha-Haaa! But even if the men in white coats come calling for Biden, what next? No one can seriously welcome the prospect of his Vice President Kamala Harris replacing him.
Last week, I described her as ‘giggly’. On Sunday, she proved me right yet again, dissolving into manic laughter when reporters tried to question her as she descended from a plane in Singapore. You’d never guess that she used to be considered a shrewd public prosecutor. She was last seen in public hiding behind a black facemask at a press conference alongside Biden. It was as if the Taliban had taken Washington, as well as Kabul. As a couple, they looked like Lord and Lady Gaga. Don’t forget, either, that Harris was the first Democrat ejected from the primary race to choose the party’s presidential candidate last time around. That was after she accused front runner Biden — the man she now understudies — of being a racist. Yet today she’s a heartbeat away from the presidency, a frightening prospect. Some Democrats are said already to be plotting ways to stop her succeeding Biden as Commander-in-chief. But if not Harris, then who? Third in line under the constitution is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the Wicked Witch of the West. At 81, she’s even older than Biden and was last spotted, as Kabul fell, at a $29,000-a-plate fundraiser under the Californian sun. The Democrats, and by extension America, are hardly spoiled for choice. There’s no princeling Bill Clinton or Barack Obama on the immediate horizon.
Meanwhile, gloating in the wings at his Mar-a-Lago compound in Palm Beach, is one Donald J. Trump, still maintaining that the last election was stolen from him and threatening to run again in 2024. The last thing a divided and wounded America needs is a re-run of the Trump circus. Probably the Republicans would be best served by choosing a new young candidate such as Florida’s impressive 42-year-old governor Ron DeSantis. But he’ll only get the nod with Trump’s blessing. For now, the U.S. — and what remains of the free world — is lumbered with Sleepy Joe, a man so befuddled that he’ll probably turn up late for his own political funeral.
24 August, 2021.
ABC News is accused of editing Biden’s car-crash interview to avoid him seeming ‘incoherent and confused’: Transcripts from unaired segments reveal he mistakenly said his son Beau served in the Navy in Afghanistan not the Army elsewhere
- Joe Biden’s interview on Wednesday with ABC News was highly controversial
- The president, in a defiant discussion, said chaos in Afghanistan was inevitable
- On Thursday ABC published the full transcript of Biden’s remarks
- The transcript contained elements which were not broadcast on Wednesday
- Biden said his late son Beau had fought in Afghanistan – then corrected himself
- He also said Beau was in the Navy, before correcting that to the Army
- Tucker Carlson accused ABC of editing the interview to flatter the president
By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
ABC News has been accused of editing its Wednesday night interview with Joe Biden to flatter the president, removing mumbled statements and lapses of memory.Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos was criticized for his claim that the chaos in Afghanistan this week was inevitable.
But on Thursday, when the full transcript was published by ABC, it emerged that chunks of it were edited out. Biden falsely claimed that his son Beau, who died of a brain tumour in May 2015, aged 46, had served in Afghanistan. He then corrected himself and said it was Iraq, but he also claimed Beau was in the Navy, when in fact he was in the Army.
The president again had to correct himself.
Joe Biden spoke to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday night. On Thursday the transcript was published, which showed that parts of his remarks, where he tied himself in verbal knots, were not included
‘Toward the end of his interview with ABC there was a telling exchange,’ said Tucker Carlson, Fox News host, on Thursday evening. ‘That exchange was never broadcast on camera. ‘Now television networks edit interviews very often for time. ‘But ABC News appears to have edited out portions that made Joe Biden look – how to put it. Not presidential. Incoherent. Confused.’ Carlson then read from the transcript.
Asked by Stephanopoulos why the U.S. could not have withdrawn from Afghanistan with dignity, Biden’s response was jumbled. ‘Look, that’s like askin’ my deceased son Beau, who spent six months in Kosovo and a year in Iraq as a Navy captain and then major– I mean, as an Army major,’ Biden said. ‘And, you know, I’m sure h– he had regrets comin’ out of Afganista– I mean, out of Iraq. ‘He had regrets to what’s– how– how it’s going. But the idea– what’s the alternative? The alternative is why are we staying in Afghanistan? Why are we there?’ Biden has struggled to overcome a stutter ever since he was a boy, and has been open about the challenges of public speaking, and the decades of work he put in to improving his presentation.
Yet Carlson suggested that the moment was more significant than a stutter. ‘We think it’s worth knowing what happened, especially in a moment of national crisis,’ Carlson said. ‘We are not attacking him, we are not telling you this with glee – we are telling you this because it’s true. The scary thing about Afghanistan is that it reveals American weakness. And weakness begets aggression.’ He said that Biden’s remarks revealed ‘weakness at the heart of government.’
Journalist Michael Tracey remarked: ‘Seems suspicious that ABC has only released a small fragment of video from this incredibly garbled transcript.’ And another Twitter user added: ‘I support Pres. Biden’s decision to depart Afghanistan despite the apparent incompetence in its execution. ‘But reading this word salad interview transcript fits right along with the latter observation….’
DailyMail.com has reached out to ABC News for comment. 23/08/21
Biden Says We May Need To Reinvade Afghanistan As They Have Weapons Of Mass Destruction Which We Gave Them ![https://media.babylonbee.com/articles/article-9316-1.jpg]()
WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a stirring address to the nation, Biden sadly announced that we may soon have to invade Afghanistan once again after intelligence reports revealed they may have weapons of mass destruction, which we gave to them last week.
“Listen, folks, I know it seems like just last week since we were in Afghanistan,” he said, “but it looks like we may have to go back. As it turns out, there are terrorists who now have weapons of mass destruction since we gave them weapons of mass destruction just the other day. Too bad! We have no other choice!”
The administration then announced they will be mobilizing 85,000 troops to reinvade the country and seize the weapons of mass destruction before the terrorists have a chance to use them. Then they will stay behind for 2 or 20 years to make sure nothing bad happens before abruptly leaving in the middle of the night since that worked so well last time.
“This time, we’ll make sure to grab all our stuff before we leave!” Biden assured the public.
Who Decides If Presidents Are Unfit to Serve?
American presidents are not required to pass mental health exams or psychological and psychiatric evaluations before taking office in the United States. But some psychologists and members of Congress have called for such mental health exams for candidates following the 2016 election of Republican Donald Trump. Even members of Trump’s own administration expressed concern about his “erratic behaviour” in office. The president described himself as a “very stable genius.”
The idea of requiring presidential candidates to undergo mental health exams is not new, though. In the mid-1990s, former President Jimmy Carter pushed for the creation of a panel of physicians who would routinely evaluate the most powerful politician in the free world and decide whether their judgment was clouded by a mental disability. “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. president becoming disabled, particularly by a neurologic illness,” Carter wrote in a December 1994 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Monitoring a President’s Health
Carter’s suggestion led to the creation in 1994 of the Working Group on Presidential Disability, whose members later proposed a nonpartisan, standing medical commission “to monitor the president’s health and issue periodic reports to the country.” Carter envisioned a panel of expert physicians who were not directly involved in the care of the president determining whether he had a disability.
“If the president of the United States must decide within minutes how to respond to a dire emergency, its citizens expect him or her to be mentally competent and to act wisely,” wrote Dr. James Toole, a professor of neurology at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, who worked with the group. “Because the presidency of the United States is now the world’s most powerful office, should its incumbent become even temporarily unable to exercise good judgment, the consequences for the world could be unimaginably far-reaching.”
There is currently no such standing medical commission in place, however, to observe a sitting president’s decision-making. The sole test of a candidate’s physical and mental fitness to serve in the White House is the rigor of the campaign trail and election process.
Psychiatrists Can’t Diagnose Candidates
The American Psychiatric Association banned its members from offering opinions about elected officials or candidates for office after 1964 when a group of them called Republican Barry Goldwater unfit for office. Wrote the association:
On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.
The policy became known as the Goldwater Rule.
Who Decides If a President Is Unfit to Serve?
So if there’s no mechanism in place by which an independent panel of health experts is able to evaluate a sitting president, who decides when there might be a problem with his decision-making process? The president himself, which is the problem.
Presidents have gone out of their way to hide their ailments from the public and, more importantly, their political enemies. Among the most notable in modern history was John F. Kennedy, who didn’t let the public know about his colitis, prostatitis, Addison’s disease, and osteoporosis of the lower back. While those ailments certainly would not have precluded him from taking office, Kennedy’s reluctance to disclose the pain he suffered illustrates the lengths to which presidents go to conceal health problems.
Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified in 1967, allows a sitting president, members of his cabinet, or, in extraordinary circumstances, Congress, to transfer his responsibilities to his vice president until he has recovered from a mental or physical ailment.
The amendment reads, in part:
Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
The problem with the constitutional amendment, however, is that it relies on a president or his cabinet to determine when he is unable to perform the duties of the office.
American Constitution 17 September, 1787
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