As Noah and Jim flagged, the knives are out for Joe Biden and his senior White House staff over their efforts to cover up the depths of the former president’s mental and physical decline. What strikes me is there seems to be this effort by the media, White House staffers, Democratic lawmakers, and political consultants, to excuse their own failures. A sort of “hey, don’t blame us, we were duped just like everybody else.”

I don’t have much sympathy. Biden’s mental and physical decline was obvious to everybody who even casually watched his public appearances, saw how he walked, or listened to him speak for about 30 seconds. 

In September 2021 (just eight months into his presidency), I wrote in this very space about a Pew poll finding that a majority of Americans had said Biden was not “mentally sharp.”  In May 2023, over a year before his disastrous debate performance, 62 percent of Americans surveyed by NPR/PBS/Marist said that Biden’s mental fitness was a real concern rather than just a political attack.

I could cite plenty more polls like this, but you get the point. Somehow, most Americans, who lack access to anonymous DC sources, realized that Biden was rapidly declining and unfit to serve, and yet we’re supposed to believe that a small cabal of officials managed to trick much of the White House press corps and even staffers who interacted with him regularly.