As Reality Fades
06-28-2024 Roger Berkowitz
One man lies so unapologetically and with such bravado that reality seems to retreat in the face of his passionate conviction. The other man is confused, seemingly losing track of the world as it passes him by. Within minutes of the beginning of the U.S. presidential debate on Thursday, it was clear to anyone watching that Joe Biden is too mentally incapacitated to run an effective campaign for President. It is equally obvious that Donald Trump—who denies he lost in 2020, who sought to steal the election, who refuses to say he will accept the results of the election, and who is surrounding himself with minions who have no compunction about ignoring the Constitution or the laws — has no business being President for a second term. Beyond the obvious, what is so terrifying about our political moment is the way that both sides have become so fully committed to lying.
While Trump’s lies are bold and in your face, the lies by the Biden administration are becoming equally dangerous, threatening to all-but-guarantee a second Trump presidency with potentially far-reaching consequences for the future of the American Republic. For months, the administration has attacked anyone who questioned Biden’s mental agility or worried about his age. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that in closed door meetings about Ukraine, Biden “spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting.” The paper added that Biden “read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.” Prior to that, Special Counsel Robert Hur had filed a report saying that Biden’s memory and mental agility were “significantly limited.” Biden responded angrily in a news conference that he was sharp and fine, and his administration increasingly isolated itself from anyone who dared to criticize Biden’s mental health. All the while limiting Biden’s public appearances to scripted interactions. According to the Journal, “His last wide-ranging town-hall-style meeting with an independent news outlet was in October 2021,” and he holds increasingly fewer meetings with anyone outside his inner circle. The debate was Biden’s gamble to show the American people that he was mentally sharp. He failed miserably.
And yet, even as everyone witnessed Biden’s decline with their own eyes, there was the administration officials once again denying the obvious. In the Financial Times, Lauren Fedor quoted Biden Administration officials who are living in a land of their own, as saying that “Thursday was the US president’s best day of grassroots, or small-dollar, fundraising, since the start of his campaign, and circulated a memo arguing that he had “won” the debate by persuading independent and undecided voters… On Friday morning, a Biden campaign official said the president would hold a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina that day, “riding the momentum of President Biden’s decisive win against Donald Trump”.
I understand how hard it is for President Biden and his wife Jill to come to terms with the reality that Biden is not up for a campaign. I’ve experienced a parent slide into cognitive decline. It is brutal and scary. There is every tendency in the world to convince yourself that that your loved one is functioning. And in some ways they are. Even amidst the dementia, the old personality shines through and the laughter rings out. For years I wanted to believe that while my father might be forgetting what was just said, he still was as sharp as ever. But it was not true. At this point, most of the world knows that President Biden is not fully functioning. Yes, of course, he may have a few good hours between 10 am and 4 pm most days when he can speak coherently. Those moments of clarity can convince you that your loved one is really fine. But the truth is that President Biden is not fine. And he is certainly not up for the rigors of one of the most consequential electoral campaigns in world history.
The war against reality being waged by Biden's campaign is astounding. I am not sure how aware President Biden is of his own cognitive decline, but those around him have to confront reality. The lies they are weaving have been blatant, and none of this should have been a surprise. And it is endangering the country. As Yascha Mounk writes:
The signs that Biden’s cognitive state was deteriorating intensified throughout the first years of his presidency. As early as 2022, I argued in these pages that there were strong reasons “to worry about whether he can be an effective standard-bearer for the Democratic Party in extremely important elections that are still over two years away.” This insight did not require any special skill or intelligence; all that was required was a willingness to say out loud what was already in front of everyone’s eyes.
And yet, the most influential pundits and columnists in the country refused to do just that for another year and a half. Back in the fall of 2023, the last opportunity for Biden to bow out gracefully and open the way for Democrats to run an ordinary primary contest, the taboo was still strong. Though plenty of journalists were privately conceding to me that they were worried about Biden’s age by that time, they studiously avoided sharing such concerns with their readers—or went so far as to say the opposite on the air.
As clearly as anyone, Bari Weiss understood the depth of deception and self-deception that have taken over the Democratic establishment. She writes:
The debate was not just a catastrophe for President Biden. And boy—oy—was it ever.
But it was more than that. It was a catastrophe for an entire class of experts, journalists, and pundits, who have, since 2020, insisted that Biden was sharp as a tack, on top of his game, basically doing handstands while peppering his staff with tough questions about care for migrant children and aid to Ukraine.
Anyone who committed the sin of using their own eyes on the 46th president was accused, variously, of being Trumpers; MAGA cult members who don’t want American democracy to survive; ageists; or just dummies easily duped by “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “fake news,” and, most recently, “cheapfakes.”
Cast your mind back to February, when Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents, came out with his report that included details about Biden’s health, which explained why he would not prosecute the president.“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Can anyone doubt that characterization after watching Biden’s debate performance?
Yet Eric Holder told us that Hur’s remarks were “gratuitous.” The former attorney general tweeted: “Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.” Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama adviser, said Hur’s report was a “partisan hit job.” Vice President Kamala Harris argued: “The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts, and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.” The report does not “live in reality,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, stressing that the president was “sharp” and “on top of things.”
Shall I go on? Okay.