President Joe Biden’s holier than thou attitude surely explains, at least in part, why so many people want him replaced. Take the president’s absurd claim the day following his debate disaster that “I would not be running again if I did not believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job.”
That Biden can make this argument with a straight face indicates that one of two things is true. Either the president has not watched the video of his debate performance or those of his growing list of mental slips. Alternatively, Biden is so arrogant that he actually believes even in his senile state he still can do the job of president better than any other Democrat could.
True, former President Donald Trump has a galactic ego and nonexistent capacity for introspection. Trump regularly tells us he is the best president in history. He evidently believes he has more courage than George Washington (who, against threat of hanging and facing terrible military odds, made a nation and then surrendered power to the people). Trump believes he has endured more hardship than Abraham Lincoln (who saved a nation, ended slavery, and then died for his accomplishments). And Trump believes he did more in his first term than any other president has done in any of their terms. Presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who led the world in defeating Japanese imperialism and Nazism), for example. Trump believes these things because his ultimate counsel begins and ends with his daily gaze into his mirror on the wall.
That said, the first family’s response to Biden’s debate debacle last week is quickly becoming insufferable.
Holding a crisis summit at Camp David following the debate, the first family found the courage to admit that everyone but Biden himself is to blame for his self-destruction. The Bidens have decided that stubbornness is the solution to the worldwide broadcast of the president’s senility. “One of the people informed about” the Camp David summit told the New York Times that “‘the entire family is united’ and added flatly that the president was not getting out of the race and had not discussed doing so. ‘You get up and keep fighting,’ the person said.”
Brilliant. The first family didn’t even discuss the idea of the president ending his candidacy. They didn’t even discuss what anyone with the senses of sight and hearing and even a basic understanding of global affairs would recognize is the most patriotic response to Biden’s public self-immolation. This is no small concern. While Biden’s senility display made many Americans wince, it surely also made Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin smile.
Those leaders suspected the president was declining at a rapid pace and now they know it. We and they know that Biden’s ability to master the content of a 3 a.m. crisis wake-up call is likely very weak now and only set to get worse. These enemies of America know, in other words, that they have an increasing strategic opportunity to undermine our security and that of our allies by bold gambits at opportune moments. Put slightly differently, there is a reason that U.S. military personnel assigned to nuclear weapons activities undergo extensive psychological assessments. It’s the very same reason why the person in command of those nuclear forces should probably be someone who isn’t senile.
Again, however, the first family’s attitude to this national command crisis is one of arrogant derision. Forget “The buck stops here,” because apparently the first family’s motto appears to be “The buck stops anywhere but with a Biden.”
This disdain for responsibility is now wedded to absurd hypocrisy. Take Biden’s address on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision on Tuesday. Slamming Trump’s disdain for the rule of law and effectively describing the Supreme Court as an enemy of the people, Biden then insisted, “I know that I will accept the limits of presidential powers as I have for three and a half years.” Really? This, from the same president who gleefully declared how, when it came to his student loan relief program, “the Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.”
The president’s hypocrisy extends to first lady Jill Biden, seemingly the most avowed supporter of his remaining in the presidential race. In a suffocatingly celebratory Vogue profile on Monday, the first lady informed us that “We know what’s at stake. Joe is asking the American people to come together to draw a line in the sand against all this vitriol.”
Of what vitriol does thou speak?
Of Trump’s hateful attacks on anyone who dares challenge him? Or of Biden’s repeated attacks not just on Trump but on those who might consider voting for his political opponent? Does the first lady not recall her husband’s September 2022 assertion that “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. … MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy”? Biden insists also that these tens of millions of Americans want to ensure there is “no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” Oh, and do not forget that Biden made this vitriolic screed while assigning two Marine sentries to stand post behind him under glaring red lights.
Again, introspection is not a word in the Biden dictionary.
The first lady then tells Vogue that “Fundamentally, Americans care about each other. And this anger and animosity and divisiveness … it’s not who we are. We’re good people.”
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I agree with that sentiment, but it’s not exactly the example that the first family always sets. The president has described his son, Hunter Biden, as having “enormous courage,” for example. But just not so enormous as to allow Hunter Biden to pretend that his 5-year-old daughter actually exists. And since the debate disaster, the Bidens have turned on their most loyal advisers, attacking them across the media. The first family happily ignores the fact that the only possible way to justify blaming Biden’s advisers for his implosion is if those same advisers had advised Biden to repeatedly mumble his words, repeatedly become visibly confused, and repeatedly stare blankly into open space, mouth agape, when not talking.
Does Trump take responsibility for his failures? No. Does Trump care more about the country than himself? No. But let’s stop pretending the answer to either of those questions is any different for the incumbent president or his family. Biden would step down if that were the case. At the very minimum, he would be giving that prospect serious consideration.