Oh, Joe! You've done it again!

[SGR]

@jimmy jazz, you'll enjoy this one. 

[jimmy jazz]

The Jackie one is glorious.

[Trollheart]

Vice-President Trump? Oh dear!     


"Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she was not qualified to be president. So start there," Mr Biden said as he responded to a question from Reuters about his confidence in Ms Harris.

The president coughed frequently and occasionally garbled his responses at the outset of the news conference, and towards the end his answers frequently trailed off before he had completed his thoughts. At the same time, he delivered detailed responses on issues such as the Israel-Gaza conflict and the need for western countries to produce more military weaponry to counter Russia and China.

That came a few hours after Mr Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as "President Putin" at the NATO summit in Washington, drawing gasps from those in the room.

[Psy-Fi]

Did Biden Say He Was F**king The NATO Secretary General's Wife?!?

[SGR]

Vice-President Trump? Oh dear!     


"Look, I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she was not qualified to be president. So start there," Mr Biden said as he responded to a question from Reuters about his confidence in Ms Harris.

That came a few hours after Mr Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as "President Putin" at the NATO summit in Washington, drawing gasps from those in the room.

[SGR]

Voter: "I'm proud of you, ya old fart"

Biden: "Now just remember, no eating cats or dogs"   

If nothing else, Biden still has that folksy charisma and humor.

https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1834057076005634522

[Psy-Fi]

[SGR]

Well, tomorrow will be the day that Biden departs the White House and the presidency. It will be interesting to see how history assesses him in 30-40 years down the line. Hopefully, by then, there will be some quality comprehensive biographies written about his life to read (I'm currently working on a goal to read at least one biography of every US president). Say what you will about the man, but he never lost that old Scranton smile of his. I genuinely hope he has a nice post-presidency where he finally gets time to relax and just enjoy the company of his children/grandchildren and his family. Thanks for the laughs, Joe.

[Lexi Darling]

don't cry because it's joever, smile because it joeccurred

[Buck_Mulligan]

I'm not on Xitter, but I come across these by way of a blog....You wonder how many other times something similar may have happened.

https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1880602719754293249

The link works.

[SGR]

I'm not on Xitter, but I come across these by way of a blog....You wonder how many other times something similar may have happened.

https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1880602719754293249

The link works.

Speaker Johnson references the 'front page of the Wall Street Journal' in that video - the article here is what he's referencing - it's an archive link so you don't need to worry about the paywall. It's definitely worth a read, and while it's not necessarily surprising based on everything I saw in Biden's behavior/mannerisms in the last few years, it's certainly illuminating. Some quotes:

quotes from the WSJ article

Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden's case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.

Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. "They body him to such a high degree," a person who witnessed it said, adding that the "hand holding" is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.
...
Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.
The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.

If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. "He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we're going to address this tomorrow," the former aide recalled the official saying.
While it isn't uncommon for politicians to want more time with the president than they get, some Democrats felt Biden was unusually hard to reach.

That's what Rep. Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Smith, a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.
Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn't talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.
...
The president's team of pollsters also had limited access to Biden, according to people familiar with the president's polling. The key advisers have famously had the president's ear in most past White Houses.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.
By the 2024 campaign, the pollsters weren't talking to the president about their findings, and instead sent memos that went to top campaign staff.

Biden's pollsters didn't meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.

[close]

There's been a lot of blame to go around after the Dems lost 2024 - but many people still put much of the burden of guilt on Biden - claiming he waited too long to drop out and that he put his ego over the good of the party/country. But if, as would appear to be the case based on the Wall Street Journal report, Biden's mental faculties and cognitive abilities were truly in an extended period of disrepair and decline, and Biden wasn't even getting accurate and honest information from his advisers (we can look back at multiple off-the-cuff interactions Biden had with the press in which they asked him about his lagging poll numbers, and his usual rejoinder was that they're looking at the wrong polls, and the polls he's seen either show him up or in a dead-heat race - "read the polls, jack!"), you can rather easily frame this as an old man who was being taken advantage of by his close advisers and inner circle, and wasn't even in the right state of mind to realize it.

So I don't think the whole story has been written on exactly what happened yet - more people need to talk - and hell, maybe the entirety of the details won't see the light of day until Biden is no longer around - but there's plenty of missing pieces here. Particularly for me, what was the thought process of Biden doing that debate with Trump? It was the earliest a general election debate had ever been held, but was the hope that he'd be having a 'good day' and he'd do well enough against Trump to dispel concerns about his age? Or was it really some kind of power-play behind-the-scenes to feed him to the media wolves and expose him and force him and his inner circle of advisers to eventually withdraw from the race?

I think much of the blame, maybe even more than on Biden himself (because of his condition and mental decline), should be placed on Biden's inner circle of advisers and party luminaries for keeping the charade going as long as they did without sitting Biden down and giving him the blunt truth or at least leaking details to the media earlier to put his feet to the fire so that the Democrats could have had a proper primary cycle to select a successor. I could buy many Democrat senators not knowing the scale of Biden's decline, but I'd find it hard to believe that the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Obama, and Chuck Schumer didn't have enough connections to know what was going on and realize there was an impetus to act sooner. And blame should also be laid at the feet of the incurious media, who too often dismissed criticisms of Biden's mental health as purely partisan attacks from Republicans, rather than as a catalyst for journalistic follow-up investigations - until it got to the point that denying it would get even them laughed out of their cocktail parties.

All this to say that I'm not sure the general consensus of Biden in 10 or 20 years will be simply as a 'stubborn, old fool who couldn't see what was right in front of him'. Based on what we already know right now, I don't think it should be.

[Buck_Mulligan]

^^^
Agree that it will take time to properly evaluate as it always does. You bet there'll be lots of books etc. Jill Biden recently took a swipe at Nancy Pelosi for her role in Biden's decision to stand down. Pelosi's daughter Andrea hit back. Shortly after the election I read a piece quoting top aide Anita Dunn as saying Biden should never have stepped down. She and her hubby Bob Bauer are a longtime DC power couple. Both have worked Clinton, Obama, and Biden. The Donilon brothers (Mike and Tom) likely also played a role in the cover-up.

[Psy-Fi]

Biden warned against Trump preemptively pardoning family after 2020 election, then did it himself minutes before leaving office

Former President Joe Biden said he was "concerned" about Donald Trump giving preemptive pardons to family members, according to a resurfaced interview from 2020 — before he went on to pardon his own son and siblings while doling out the highest number of presidential pardons and commutations in US history.

In a December 2020 interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Biden warned against then-outgoing President Trump issuing preemptive pardons to his adult children, his attorney Rudy Giuliani and possibly even one for himself before the Democrat's Department of Justice took over.

"It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks (at) us as a nation of laws and justice," Biden told Tapper during the joint interview with then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

[Psy-Fi]

Video Compilation Of Dems CONDEMNING Preemptive Pardons During Trump's Last Term!