Anyone familiar with the early stages of dementia will recognise the signs in Biden
DOMINIC GREEN. 12 March 2021 • 12:14pm
Joe Biden’s decline has become so painful to see and so embarrassing to watch that it feels cruel to mention it. But it’s even more cruel that Biden’s team act as if it’s not happening, and most of America’s media look the other way.
On Thursday night, Biden marked the first anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdowns and his fiftieth day in the White House by giving the first televised address of his presidency. He hadn’t been seen in public for three days, which is what he seems to require if he’s not to unravel before the cameras.
From the moment he wheezed up to the lectern and peered into the camera, you could tell Biden was on top form: croaky sentiment, sporadic belligerence, and only the occasional moment when he looked oddly distant and perplexed, as though he didn’t understand the words he was reading.
He got through twenty minutes, then tottered off without taking any questions or falling over his dog. This is how low the bar now is for Biden. And we can see how hard Biden has to fight, and what a long run-up he requires, if he is to clear it.Advertisement
We can see it in his struggle to follow the simple lines on his autocue, and in his bungling of the simplest ad-libs. We see it in the clips of his increasingly desperate handlers trying to block him from questions at his rare and carefully managed appearances before the cameras. Most of all, we see it in his eyes.
Biden frequently looks afraid and lost. Anyone who has spent time with elderly people in the early stages of dementia knows that expression – and the sporadic and worsening loss of focus that causes it.
“What am I doing here?” Biden asked after fumbling his autocue lines in an address in Texas in late February. He reached for the cue cards that are now his constant companion. “I’m gonna lose track here.”
Biden’s supporters call him “gaffe-prone”. It’s true: he’s always thought with his mouth open. It’s also true that he bravely overcame a speech impediment in childhood, and that anxiety and age can cause a stutter to recur. But these aren’t gaffes or stutters.
Compare how he moves and sounds now to how he was a year ago, let alone five years ago. Biden looks and sounds frail. He seems visibly distressed at his inability to carry out the simplest requirements of office – and at a time when the requirements are simpler than usual.Advertisement
When Biden dodged the press during last year’s election campaign, his aides called it Covid-19 precautions. As the pandemic ends, he will run out of excuses for not travelling. He doesn’t look capable of leading an international summit, let alone taking the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call.
Earlier this week, the Commander-in-Chief forgot the name of the largest department in the US government, the Department of Defense, as well as the name of the man he recently appointed as its leader, Lloyd Austin.
“Thank you to the Sec… the former general… I keep calling him general… my… my… the guy who runs that outfit over there,” he flailed.
Biden is the first President in decades to reach fifty days in office without giving a press conference. He missed giving the traditional speech to Congress in February. His handlers refuse to name when he might talk to the press, and only offer that it’s “something he will do in the future”.
There’s only one possible explanation. Biden’s team don’t trust him to manage one of the simplest requirements of modern political office. But they know they can’t defer the reckoning.Advertisement
The longer Biden waits, the more newsworthy his delayed appearance will be, and the greater the scrutiny of his performance. And once Biden has surrendered to the rising expectation that he speak live and unscripted, he will be expected to do it again, and again, just like any other President.
This presidency is turning into a theatre of cruelty. It can only end one way. Sooner or later, Biden will be caught in the spotlight. The Democrats who promoted an unfit candidate to America’s highest office, and the media who covered for him, will be exposed as having betrayed their responsibilities to the American people. The people’s trust in democratic institutions will decline further. And we will all be party to Biden’s public humiliation.
Dominic Green is deputy editor of The Spectator’s US edition.
Biden is not perfect, but i give him a chance. Had Trump’s head not been stuck up Putin’s ass, he may have won the elections, despite they were probably rigged to some extend. Except for Obama i always supported all presidents as well as GOP in the Senate and Congress. Most support for Ukraine was bi-partisan eversince, and cannot be reduced to one party or person. So, let the mummie do his job. 😎
To say Biden is not perfect is silly beyond words. Biden’s dementia was obvious last summer and the progression was quite noticeable in the fall.
Funny that you think that “Trump’s head [was]… stuck up Putin’s ass.” Trump gave military serious aid to Ukraine, while Obama refused. While that was going on, Biden was insisting that a prosecutor be fired who was involved in an investigation into Burisma, which Hunter Biden was sucking off of at the time.
He goes to bed at 7.00 pm. Kamala takes his calls after that. She and Pelosi are running the show. They are from the same team that turned San Francisco from one of the world’s beautiful cities to a bum-riddled shithole. Future business model for America.
And if you think this is off topic, consider what plans Nancy and Kamala might have for Ukraine? Ans: probably nothing. They have got too many other pet projects, such as putting trannies in the army and giving millions of passports to illiterate even in their own language future Dem voters.
[…] President Biden is crumbling before our eyes […]
I think that Biden is only a puppet and that the bitch Harris will be installed after Biden is declared incompetent. God help us all if this comes to pass. Biden is bad enough for the country, with his open-border policy, for instance, but Harris would be the country’s undertaker.
Last time I was in SF, it was still beautiful. There were a few bums on the Warfe, but the police kept them under control. A friend of mine was there in 2019 and he said it literally was a shithole. Even when sitting in a decent restaurant, you’re still not safe from the squalor. The bums have multiplied massively and are sufficiently emboldened by piss poor policing that they just do whatever they want, including taking a shit in the street outside restaurants. Yuk, vile. Local law says they don’t go to jail unless they shoplift goods over the value of $900, so they just help themselves.
This is the business model that Harris/Pelosi would bring everywhere if they had the chance.
My business model is zero tolerance with violence towards women and children. It will prevail in the long run.
San Francisco is your typical type of place after leftist-liberals get the overhand. They turn any gem into a steaming, maggot-infested butt burrito.
Biden said ‘our border is not open’. So i doubt he is that bad. I have plenty of confidence he will be an ok president.
By modern Dem standards he’s a moderate. And from a Ukraine standpoint, the mood music is promising. But unfortunately it may turn out that he was a Trojan Horse for the far left. It has been pointed out to me that he only has to hold out for 2 years under the current rules, then hand over to Kamala. She then sees out the final 2 years and can rule for another 8 years!
What she would do about Russian imperialism is not known.
The fossil only forgot that he opened the border.
https://www.voanews.com/usa/immigration/biden-immigration-changes-raise-hopes-concerns-us-mexico-border
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/politics/immigration-mexico-border-biden.html
Yet, even his puppet masters are realizing there is a serious problem on the southern border. So far, his fraudulency has been a disaster, and it is going to get worse. Far worse.
It is incredible to reflect that no Democratic presidential candidate has won an election without divine or illicit human intervention since FDR in 1944.
Bill Clinton in 1996, the first re-election of a Democratic president in 60 years, is the exception that proves the rule. This is the record of the party that dominated every level of American politics for half of the 20th century. It is an appalling record in a two-party system where the electoral college system is biased towards large Democratic states, and where on most major issues, a majority of voters nominally support the Democratic position even with the mainstream media becoming nothing more than a campaign mechanism for the Democratic party.
The list of anomalies that have disguised this disgrace is impressive:
Harry Truman squeaks to victory in ’48 on FDR’s legacy and a little post-balloting assistance from the big city machines in St. Louis, Chicago and New York.
John F. Kennedy gets an illicit leg up as Boss Daley of Chicago stuffs an extra 50,000 votes downstate. Richard Nixon contemplates an injunction, then concedes, recognizing that, in Illinois, co-operative witnesses rarely survive.
Lyndon Johnson shamelessly milks the JFK assassination, the nation’s grief, and his “partnership” with the beloved dead president. It helps in 1964 that Barry Goldwater is the worst candidate ever nominated.
Jimmy Carter is delivered to power by the flood of revulsion at Watergate in 1976 and proceeds through total ineptitude to kill Dems chances for a decade.
Bill Clinton is elected by Ross Perot’s vote-splitting in 1992. But he goes on in 1996 to become the only Democrat to be re-elected since FDR.
The problem you have now in the states is that the Dems have the same type of left/liberal voting bloc as eg: the Labour Party in Britain, ie : the entire public sector, the unions, the socialist welfare state and its clients and a big chunk of media. The difference being that ol’ Joe has big tech as well!