RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/no-auditory-illusions-about-it/

The debate on Thursday evening between U.S. President Joe Biden and predecessor Donald Trump is a gift that keeps on giving. Every syllable spoken by the two presumptive nominees continues to be the focus of both serious and comedic discourse.

Only a handful of desperate straw-graspers are rejecting the consensus opinion that the incumbent’s performance revealed an unacceptable level of age-related brain fog. Even those of his ardent supporters in the media who’ve been telling us not to believe our lying eyes realized that the jig was up.

Fearing electoral defeat in November, especially to Trump, they instantly altered the narrative to one of sadness about the inescapable conclusion that Joe must go. Barack Obama’s feeble attempt at obfuscating the disaster—by posting on X, “Bad debate nights happen”—hasn’t made a dent in the Democrats’ scramble to persuade Biden to back out of the race and settle on a replacement.

And with good reason, from their standpoint. Indeed, Biden didn’t merely have a “bad debate night.” His whatever-stage dementia was on full display.

First Lady “Dr. Jill” hit home this reality particularly hard when, post-fiasco, she cheered in nursery-school-teacher singsong to her husband: “You answered every question! You knew all the facts!”

Cringeworthy doesn’t begin to describe the scene. Nor does it do justice to the entire exchange between the two senior citizens, one a few years younger than the other, but with all his faculties, as farcical as they often seem.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/01/who-should-voters-let-finish-the-job-biden-or-trump/

Aside from repeatedly calling Donald Trump a liar, the only message President Joe Biden managed to convey during last week’s debate was that Trump left him a terrible mess to clean up.

The first words out of his mouth in the debate were: “You have to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me. We had an economy that was in freefall.”

And his closing remarks began: “We’ve made significant progress from the debacle that was left by President Trump in his – in his last term.”

It’s clear why Biden’s debate prep team wanted those to be the first thing he said — before he wandered off into a maze of half-completed sentences. The Biden administration has seen the polls. It knows that the public doesn’t view things this way.

CBS News, for example, reported recently that: “Voters recall the economy under Trump more fondly than they rate the economy now. While neither gets great marks, voters today look back on Trump’s presidency with relatively better retrospective ratings than they’d rate Mr. Biden’s presidency so far.”

So who’s right? Whose policies did a better job of spurring growth, raising wages, keeping the country safe?

There is, thankfully, an objective way to answer this. Compare where things stood at comparable points in each presidency to see who was doing a better job – and whose policies are worth pursuing over the next four years.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/28/why-the-democrats-lied-about-joe-bidens-frailty/

So this is how republics die. Not with a bang but with the hoarse ramblings of their ageing leaders. Few events have shone a light on ‘American decline’ as much as Joe Biden’s sad, impassive performance in last night’s CNN presidential debate. Here was the leader of the free world speaking in faint, broken tones, and struggling to stay focussed, and at points seeming to blank out entirely. Before the eyes of the world, it became clear: this man is too old, too frail and too infirm to be at the helm of America.

And yet, Old Joe’s physical infirmity is not the thing that should horrify us. Everyone ages, everyone withers. No, it is the moral infirmity of the Democratic establishment that is truly chilling. It is those who are so bent on power that they’ll force a frail man on to the world stage to do their bidding who deserve our ire. It is the media movers and shakers who said ‘Joe is fine’, and who damned the concerned as ageist cranks, who have behaved atrociously. Behind Biden’s physical decay is the far graver problem of the moral decay of a ruling class that will lie, gaslight and bully just to stay on top.

The debate was a dreadful spectacle. No one can now deny that Biden is not fit for the highest office in the Western world. Even Donald Trump seemed to put a lid on his usual piss-taking, perhaps clocking that Biden’s decline is now too serious for wisecracks. Although at one point, after Biden breathlessly mumbled something about border control, Trump snuck in a jibe: ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.’ The vacant, doleful look on Biden’s face in response to Trump’s swipe was painful to see.

At times, Biden glitched completely. Fourteen minutes into proceedings, and then again 22 minutes into proceedings, his mental faculties seemed to betray him and he just stalled. The moderator, Jake Tapper, had to save him at one point, delivering a merciful ‘Thank you, Mr President’ after he malfunctioned during a muddled commentary on Covid or Medicare or something. He even fluffed his attack on Trump over his lack of physical prowess. ‘You can see he is six feet five and only 224 pounds. Or 20… 30… five pounds’, he said, weakly, strangely. In trying to land a blow on Trump over alleged ill-health, he hurt only himself.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/michelle_o_breaks_cover_and_her_timing_is_spot_on.html

All over the media in the past two days was Michelle Obama’s “exclusive” interview, in which she dished on the Biden family dysfunction.

Such a piece of journalistic slavishness is hardly surprising. Surely the ironies have not escaped public notice: “private frustration”—no, not exactly private.

To any of us who attended the First and Second ladies’ horror shows during Barack’s first and second terms, we saw, repeatedly, strain, and certainly no love lost between Michelle and Jill. Both are ambitious, to put it mildly, vain, and love money. Both serve as expensive props for their spouse. Neither accept rivalry from any quarter.

Michelle’s abrupt garrulousness this week was not a coincidence. It is a clear sign that the faux indifference of Ms. Obama to “be” president of the United States may be about to evaporate. We can anticipate, although most hopefully not, a putative fourth Obama administration, as Michelle and her expensive, fascistic PR network further obliterates any sign of her consistent, overarching love of power and cash, “for the good of the country.” The country, mind you, that she has scorned and degraded (see her White House parties) in the past.

I am a native of the District of Columbia. When Barry bought the Kalorama Obama Mansion (one of three, now, hither and yon, or is it four?) in a D.C. ambassadorial neighborhood, some in town knew he was planning on a continuation of his reign (come hell or high water—well, both came).

It was an historic precedent that an immediately past U.S. President would stay on in the District, even if “for our girls”—uh huh.

Then, immediately following Michelle’s typically narcissistic whine session of this week, we get the debate last night. Biden did not disappoint—he really blew it, by just being what half of the country, at least, has known he is for a very long time.

Michelle has not disappointed, either. The photographers, stylists, fashionistas, speech writers, ghost writers, and make-up artists, and pollsters, are all on alert. Look for more “exclusives”  and “private” dishings from the Obama East (to be West?) Wing-soon.

https://www.steynonline.com/14399/the-plot-thickens

EXCERPT:

Was there anyone else on the stage? Not so’s you’d know from the headlines. Biden lost to himself. And considering that the object was to make the debate all about Trump that’s quite an accomplishment.

So what’s going on? Why did whoever’s running the show allow this to happen?

I’ve been of the view, ever since the 2020 primary season, that Biden is the Permanent State’s conscious response to Trump: in 2016, Trump was all candidate and no minders; Biden is all minders and no candidate. In that sense, the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock-puppet is the perfect embodiment of American politics. We can do all the cracks about “Obama’s third term” or “the Manchurian candidate”, but the truth is that, in a supposedly self-governing republic of 350 million people, we have absolutely no idea who’s actually running the show – other than the fact that, out of those 350 million, the only one we can definitively rule out of having anything to do with it is the purported head of the executive branch.

You have to figure that that’s greatly to the advantage of the Deep State, and that’s why they’d like to keep it that way. It’s quite something to teach the people the lesson that representative politics is just a meaningless joke, third-rate dinner-theatre in which all the faux-combat is an obvious sham. In the Soviet Union, the point wasn’t to persuade you to believe the lie but to force you to live with the lie. Reducing the two-year US election cycle to the same state inflicts an even more brutal humiliation on the masses.

So why weren’t they able, after a week-and-a-half of dosage experimentation, to shoot the stiff enough of the juice to pass him off as being back in his State of the Union top-of-the-game mode?

As my former GB News colleague Neil Oliver observed long ago on The Mark Steyn Show, formulating a useful rule of contemporary politics:

This is happening because they want it to happen.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/29/how-did-the-army-of-debate-fact-checkers-miss-this-biden-whopper/

Not surprisingly, the self-appointed “fact checkers” in the media went to town on Donald Trump’s remarks during Thursday’s debate, picking apart every utterance and rating them false even if they were mostly true. Also not surprising, President Joe Biden got a relative free pass. (Although to be fair to fact-checkers, it was often hard to tell what Biden was trying to say.)

But what’s truly mind-boggling is that they missed the biggest lie Biden told all night. A lie that came out of his mouth as soon as he opened it. A lie that he then used to blame Trump for everything bad that has happened in the past three-and-a-half years.

Let’s roll the tape.

CNN’s Jake Tapper, to his credit, started the debate with a hardball question for Biden.

TAPPER: Let’s begin the debate. And let’s start with the issue that voters consistently say is their top concern, the economy.

President Biden, inflation has slowed, but prices remain high. Since you took office, the price of essentials has increased. For example, a basket of groceries that cost $100, then, now costs more than $120. And typical home prices have jumped more than 30%.

What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?

BIDEN: We’ve got to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me.

We had an economy that was in freefall. The pandemic was so badly handled. Many people were dying. All he said was it’s not that serious, just inject a little bleach in your arm. You’ll be all right.

The economy collapsed. There were no jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 15%. It was terrible.

And so, what we had to do is try to put things back together again.

Later Biden repeated the claim:

There was no inflation when I became president. You know why? The economy was flat on its back. 15% unemployment, he decimated the economy, absolutely decimated the economy. That’s why there was no inflation at the time. There were no jobs.

And then later: “Look what I’ve done. Look how I’ve turned around the horrible situation he left me.”

https://thespectator.com/politics/presidential-debate-see-get-trump-biden/

These weren’t the Lincoln-Douglas debates. They weren’t Kennedy-Nixon. If those were graded “A,” then this was “C-minus,” at best. The low point was who is the better golfer? I’ll go with Lincoln.

Both candidates filled the air with hyperbole. Trump led the way, as usual, calling everything he did “the best ever,” and everything Biden did “the worst.” He doesn’t favor shades of gray.

Biden responded in kind. He was right to emphasize Trump’s hours of silence during the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But he didn’t stop there. He went on to repeat what he surely knows is a lie about Trump’s comments after Charlottesville. And he kept going, trying to link Trump directly neo-Nazis.

It could have been worse. The CNN format was far better than previous debates. Keep it. Ditch the audience and allow only one mic at a time. The moderators’ questions were fair and tackled the big topics, as they should have. The debate would have been more informative if each candidate had time for a second rebuttal. That would have encouraged more debate over several major issues. Perhaps they can make that change next time.

What will stick in voters’ minds?

First, Trump is the same guy they either loved or hated the last time around. He hurt himself with inflated self-praise, bombastic language and turning his criticism of Biden up to eleven each time he spoke. Still, his performance was far better than his first debate in 2020, when he repeatedly interrupted Biden and came off as a bully. He avoided that trap this time, partly because of the format, partly because he didn’t disregard the rules. Trump’s major plus was that he drove home his main points about inflation, immigration, the economy and foreign wars.

For Biden, the message is far darker. Frankly, it must have been painful for many viewers to watch.

https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-the-president-has-a-cold?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

EXCERPT

In a last-minute scramble, Biden’s team leaked to friendly media: The President has a cold. The Biden after-party featured an extraordinarily animated Jill Biden saying to her husband: “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question! You knew all the facts. And let me ask the crowd, what did Trump do? He lieeeed!” 

I think the question we all have to ask after tonight is simple: If this is Biden, who’s been running our country? Like, practically, who’s been doing the job job of it? Jill Biden? The White House handyman? The interns? Karl Rove? A random Houthi? I’m not mad, I just want to know. Because the people who have been pushing to keep him in office certainly know he’s this bad, and they must like it that way. Weak and confused, he can be used, kept as a pet moderate. Interns, release the old man, just tell us your demands, and we can figure something out.

→ The cheapfakes are getting really good: Now that the dam has broken on Biden’s age and mental fitness, recall what happened in recent months to those who said out loud what was obvious last night—and has been pretty clear for some time. 

Only a week ago, Biden’s people were slamming “cheapfakes” and selective editing as dangerous weapons of misinformation that might leave the American people with the idea that the president is in anything other than rude health. Okay, well, on last night’s evidence, these cheapfakes are getting really good. 

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that a few Washington insiders who’d been in meetings with the president noticed “signs of slipping.” The story was slammed as “pointed” and “partisan.” And when Special Counsel Robert Hur called Biden an “elderly man with a poor memory,” the response from Biden and everyone around him was indignant: “How the hell dare he,” said the president. Good liberal Ezra Klein was yelled at by his cohort for suggesting back in February that Biden should step aside.

Unnamed sources were always praising Biden’s “energy” and “passion.” We’re all just thinking about memory and age in the wrong way, guys. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/reminder-biden-has-3894-or-99-of-pledged-dnc-delegates/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

With full-blown panic setting in among Democrats following President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the question of an open convention to replace him has been thrown around. But realistically, Biden won’t be replaced unless he can be convinced to withdraw.

The delegate math is this: There are 1,976 delegates required to win the Democratic nomination, and Biden has 3,894. Two other candidates have a combined seven with another 36 uncommitted. In other words, he controls about 99 percent of pledged delegates.

There are an additional 739 superdelegates, but they can only vote in a second ballot and even if every one of them wanted to oust Biden, it wouldn’t make a lick of difference.

Thus, if Biden is determined to keep running, Democrats won’t plausibly be able to replace him.

That is why, as I noted on our liveblog, First Lady Jill Biden is now the most important person in politics. If she can be convinced that her husband needs to step aside, then she is the only person who would be able to persuade him to do so. If she wants him to stay in the fight, Democrats are almost certainly stuck with him.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/the-biden-debate-debacle/

Democrats cannot say they weren’t warned. Joe Biden’s age has never been a secret. He shows it every time he appears in public. We warned them ourselves. Back in February, we wrote that Biden should have withdrawn from the race last year — and still owed it to the country to do so. That reality ought to be clear even to his admirers after a debate in which his chief opponent was not Donald Trump but his own frailty.

Biden sounded weak, wheezy, decrepit, and overwhelmed. His best moments came when he got indignant, but even then, his mantra of “the idea!” got almost as old as he sounded.

It was an unspinnably bad performance. The people who claim that Biden is consistently sharp and vigorous behind the scenes always strained credulity. They should now be ignored or mocked.

If Biden’s performance had not been so halting and weak, Trump’s own ramblings and flights from reality — on tariffs, on January 6, on deficit spending — might have cost him. But Trump was himself more disciplined than he had been during the 2020 debates, making relatively focused defenses of his record and attacks on Biden’s. He drew blood from Biden on late-term abortion and on Afghanistan.