So who's running the country? Not this man...

 

The Daily Mail in the UK has published a devastating leak about President Biden's daily routine.  We've said here before that he's clearly, visibly not competent to run his own life, let alone the country.  If this report is correct, that's not half of it.

The president is not at his Oval Office desk until at 10am and usually leaves at 7pm – Obama, by comparison, began an hour earlier.

Aides schedule most of his public events between 10am and 4pm because, White House insiders say, 'that is when he is at his sharpest.'

His news conferences are heavily limited, and he has clocked just half the number of them compared to Obama. He is often late to them, by up to an hour – aides refer to this tardiness as 'Biden Time'. Follow-up questions are heavily limited in case disaster strikes, as it did recently when he got the Egyptian premier's name wrong.

The fear of him tripping has consumed his aides and forced the Secret Service to put an extra agent at the bottom of the small Air Force One stairs, in case he repeats one of his calamitous stumbles.

To mitigate that risk, the commander-in-chief also tends to opt for slip-resistant sneakers rather than dress shoes that would usually go with a $2,000 custom Italian suit he pairs with.

These insights into the working day and life of the frail 81-year-old lend a new significance to the fundamental question facing voters - and the world: Does Biden have the mental acuity and physical energy to serve another term in the White House?

. . .

DailyMail.com has interviewed West Wing aides and experts to delve into how Biden's staff make sure the frailties that could do further damage to his 2024 campaign aren't exposed – and what they reveal tell their own compelling story.

There's more at the link.  Go read the whole thing.  It's important.

There's enough detail in the report that it should be easy enough to verify it . . . provided that the team managing and - dare I say it? - controlling President Biden would allow that.  They won't, of course.  They've been engaged in nothing less than elder abuse with him for years now.  His condition has been visibly and obviously deteriorating right throughout that time, and they've kept right on doing it.  They don't seem to care about him at all - only about holding on to the power he represents.

I used to think that the situation with President Biden was analogous to the treatment of President Wilson by his wife and staff following the latter's stroke in 1919.  Sadly, I think it's a lot worse than that today.  It's gone on longer, it's far more blatant, and it's clear that President Biden doesn't understand how he's being used, manipulated and exploited.

How any American with a conscience can stand for this is beyond me - but then, conscience is out of fashion these days.  Instead, we have gushing praise and support for President Biden from the left-wing progressive side of national politics.  Try these headlines:

Media, Democrats insist Biden has ‘strong mental acuity'

after special counsel probe hits his ‘poor memory'

Biden is 81. That’s not news, so why the panic now?

That last link is particularly sickening in its sycophancy.  Try this paragraph:

I’m a little more bullish than most about living in a gerontocracy, especially in this era of diminishing attention spans. It makes sense to view the accumulation of experience and wisdom that often comes with time as desirable attributes in a president, someone whose ability to cut through noise and ignore distractions must be unmatched. Environmental activist Bill McKibben actually says that on one issue in particular, climate change, age may be Biden’s “superpower.”

Compare that highlighted sentence with the Daily Mail's report, and what we see of the President on our television screens every day.  Just watch this TV news report about an event held at the White House last year, with President Obama celebrating the anniversary of his health care reform.

Watching President Biden's demeanor and behavior in that footage, I think it does far more to confirm the Daily Mail's story than deny it.  It seems we may be living in a country whose nominally elected leader appears to be neither elected (without cheating, that is) nor a leader.

That's one of my reasons for hoping President Trump doesn't run for re-election:  his age.  Sure, at present he appears to be fully in control of himself (well, to the extent that he can be - his off-the-cuff remarks still make me cringe sometimes), but that can't be guaranteed to continue.  Age-related incapacity catches up to all of us, some earlier, some later.  I'd much rather see a younger person elected to the Presidency, to minimize that risk.  The job of President is too important to risk age-related degeneration in its holder, particularly when those around the Oval Office, and politicians in Congress and the Senate, can't be trusted to act for the good of the country if that happens.  (Acting for the good of their party and themselves is, sadly, another matter.)

Peter