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Too feeble to indict: Joe Biden’s disastrous press conference confirms diminished mental capacity

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Biden delivers remarks at the White House on February 8, 2024

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘This is becoming a five-alarm fire for the White House’

Joe Biden attempted to do damage control at a hastily-arranged White House press conference after the Department of Justice (DOJ) published a lengthy investigative report which concluded that Biden is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties.”  

Much to the dismay of D.C. Democrats, Biden’s performance at the conference served only to confirm the report’s findings, opening the door for liberal and conservative pundits alike to question whether Biden is fit to continue as President of the United States.   

The DOJ’s damning 388-page report — issued by special counsel Robert Hur on the “investigation into unauthorized removal, retention, and disclosure of classified documents”— found that Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents and had disclosed classified military and national security information, but that because of his diminished mental capacity, no criminal charges would be filed against the 81-year-old.   

“In essence, the special counsel presents evidence that Biden should be removed under the 25th amendment,” noted conservative commentator Mark Levin.  

The issue of Biden’s national security breaches faded into the background after he stood behind an East Room podium to dispel the report’s assertions about his increasing feeble mindedness. Even far-left national media outlets couldn’t ignore last night’s train wreck at the White House.  

Biden angrily proclaimed “I am an elderly man. I know what the hell I’m doing!” during the evening presser, but few if any were buying it.   

“This is becoming a five-alarm fire for the White House,” declared a panelist on CNN’s 360 with Anderson Cooper, alarmed at both the DOJ report and Biden’s performance at the press conference. “I don’t think the president did himself any favors in that speech. He undercut two of his biggest messages.”  

A U.S. House Democrat called Biden’s verbal slip-ups “awful” and a former Biden White House official said the White House press conference was “brutal,” according to an Axios report.    

Former ABC and CNN personality Chris Cuomo asked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a question that would’ve been anathema for liberal media up until now: “Do you believe that Joe Biden is fit to be President of the United States?” 

Kennedy responded: 

I think we’ve reached a time where it’s no longer character assassination to ask legitimate questions about the President’s competency.

There are so many decisions that require nuance, that require complex levels of thinking and that those kinds of issues are coming at you many times a day.

The American people have a right to understand whether their President is capable of making those decisions.

There are entrenched interests and special interests in government that actually benefit from having a president who is not completely competent.

My complaint about what’s happening in the White House is that it’s become the sock puppet for these large industries, the big hedge funds, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, who give equally to the Republican and Democratic Party, and now are just comfortable calling the shots.

Conservatives pulled no punches

“This is the most catastrophic presidential press conference I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” said the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh.   

“Not lucid enough to be charged for a crime but still running for President are not a complementary set of facts,” noted Andrew T. Walker, Ethics & Public Theology Professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.    

Many were moved to compare and contrast Biden’s press conference performance with that of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson had been published on X earlier in the evening. 

“One of these world leaders sat attentive for a 2 hour interview and expertly gave a 30 minute history lesson in detail,” wrote Libs of TikTok. “The other confused his colors and mixed up the Presidents of 2 countries.”  

“Absolutely terrifying and embarrassing.”   

“Tonight as Putin gave intelligent, scholarly answers that delved into a thousand years of Russian history, President Biden was babbling incoherently about how the president of Egypt is actually the president of Mexico,” said Matt Walsh in a subsequent X post. 

When former Obama White House political advisor Jim Messina attempted to dismiss the significance of the special counsel’s report, American Principles Project President Terry Schilling called him out: 

It’s just all propaganda all the time from these people.

We see the decrepit and senile old man in the White House!

We hear him mumbling and stumbling.

You all are evil idiots destroying a great country.

NYT: Maybe it’s time to stop pretending that Biden’s age is not an issue 

The New York Times journalists offered remarkably honest, measured commentary amid the White House’s very bad day yesterday. 

“The decision on Thursday not to file criminal charges against President Biden for mishandling classified documents should have been an unequivocal legal exoneration,” wrote the Times’ Michael D. Shear. “Instead, it was a political disaster.”    

“Biden’s age is very clearly the most important non-Trump issue in this election,” said The New York Times politics reporter Astead Herndon. “Polling says so. Voters say so.”  

“It’s just the WH/DC have had a sorta gentleman’s agreement for the last year to pretend like it’s not. Maybe that ends now,” wondered Herndon.  

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Biden announces massive new climate goals in final weeks, despite looming Trump takeover

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Outgoing President Joe Biden announced a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions from 61-66% over the next decade, even though President Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.

Outgoing President Joe Biden announced December 19 a new climate target of reducing American carbon emissions of more than 60% over the next decade, even though returning President Donald Trump would be able to undo it as soon as next month.

“Today, as the United States continues to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, President Biden is announcing a new climate target for the United States: a 61-66 percent reduction in 2035 from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions,” the White House announced, the Washington Free Beacon reports. The new target will be formally submitted to the United Nations Climate Change secretariat.

“President Biden’s new 2035 climate goal is both a reflection of what we’ve already accomplished,” Biden climate adviser John Podesta added, “and what we believe the United States can and should achieve in the future.”

The announcement may be little more than a symbolic gesture in the end, however, as Trump is widely expected to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement upon resuming office in January, in the process voiding related climate obligations.

Trump formally pulled out of the Paris accords in August 2017, the first year of his first term, with then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley stating that the administration would be “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its business, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers.”

Such terms were never reached, however, leaving America out until Biden re-committed the nation to the Paris Agreement on the first day of his presidency, obligating U.S. policy to new economic regulations to cut carbon emissions.

In June, the Trump campaign confirmed Trump’s intentions to withdraw from Paris again. At the time, Trump’s team was reportedly mulling a number of non-finalized drafts of executive orders to do so.

Left-wing consternation on the matter is based on certitude in “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW) or “climate change,” the thesis that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, is primarily responsible for Earth’s changing climate and that such trends pose a danger to the planet in the form of rising sea levels and weather instability.

Activists have long claimed there is a “97 percent scientific consensus” in favor of AGW, but that number comes from a distortion of an overview of 11,944 papers from peer-reviewed journals, 66.4 percent of which expressed no opinion on the question; in fact, many of the authors identified with the AGW “consensus” later spoke out to say their positions had been misrepresented.

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Top Brass Is On The Run Ahead Of Trump’s Return

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Morgan Murphy

With less than a month to go before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the top brass are already running for cover. This week the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, pledged to cut approximately a dozen general officers from the U.S. Army.

It is a start.

But given the Army is authorized 219 general officers, cutting just 12 is using a scalpel when a machete is in order. At present, the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel stands at an all-time high. During World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. Today, we have one for every 1,600.

Right now, the United States has 1.3 million active-duty service members according to the Defense Manpower Data Center. Of those, 885 are flag officers (fun fact: you get your own flag when you make general or admiral, hence the term “flag officer” and “flagship”). In the reserve world, the ratio is even worse. There are 925 general and flag officers and a total reserve force of just 760,499 personnel. That is a flag for every 674 enlisted troops.

The hallways at the Pentagon are filled with a constellation of stars and the legions of staffers who support them. I’ve worked in both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Starting around 2011, the Joint Staff began to surge in scope and power. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not in the chain of command and simply serves as an advisor to the president, there are a staggering 4,409 people working for the Joint Staff, including 1,400 civilians with an average salary of $196,800 (yes, you read that correctly). The Joint Staff budget for 2025 is estimated by the Department of Defense’s comptroller to be $1.3 billion.

In contrast, the Secretary of Defense — the civilian in charge of running our nation’s military — has a staff of 2,646 civilians and uniformed personnel. The disparity between the two staffs threatens the longstanding American principle of civilian control of the military.

Just look at what happens when civilians in the White House or the Senate dare question the ranks of America’s general class. “Politicizing the military!” critics cry, as if the Commander-in-Chief has no right to question the judgement of generals who botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, bought into the woke ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or oversaw over-budget and behind-schedule weapons systems. Introducing accountability to the general class is not politicizing our nation’s military — it is called leadership.

What most Americans don’t understand is that our top brass is already very political. On any given day in our nation’s Capitol, a casual visitor is likely to run into multiple generals and admirals visiting our elected representatives and their staff. Ostensibly, these “briefs” are about various strategic threats and weapons systems — but everyone on the Hill knows our military leaders are also jockeying for their next assignment or promotion. It’s classic politics

The country witnessed this firsthand with now-retired Gen. Mark Milley. Most Americans were put off by what they saw. Milley brazenly played the Washington spin game, bragging in a Senate Armed Services hearing that he had interviewed with Bob Woodward and a host of other Washington, D.C. reporters.

Woodward later admitted in an interview with CNN that he was flabbergasted by Milley, recalling the chairman hadn’t just said “[Trump] is a problem or we can’t trust him,” but took it to the point of saying, “he is a danger to the country. He is the most dangerous person I know.” Woodward said that Milley’s attitude felt like an assignment editor ordering him, “Do something about this.”

Think on that a moment — an active-duty four star general spoke on the record, disparaging the Commander-in-Chief. Not only did it show rank insubordination and a breach of Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 88, but Milley’s actions represented a grave threat against the Constitution and civilian oversight of the military.

How will it play out now that Trump has returned? Old political hands know that what goes around comes around. Milley’s ham-handed political meddling may very well pave the way for a massive reorganization of flag officers similar to Gen. George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” of 1940. Marshall forced 500 colonels into retirement saying, “You give a good leader very little and he will succeed; you give mediocrity a great deal and they will fail.”

Marshall’s efforts to reorient the War Department to a meritocracy proved prescient when the United States entered World War II less than two years later.

Perhaps it’s time for another plucking board to remind the military brass that it is their civilian bosses who sit at the top of the U.S. chain of command.

Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.

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