I have just been reading a fascinating deep-dive into the White House’s machinations – orchestrated on the nation – of obscuring and concealing the President’s obvious physical frailty and mental ailing.
It has become embarrassing – even painful to watch. The recent embarrassing Zelensky/Putin gaffe is just too much. Everyone is waiting for the next slip-up. As Michael Moore recently said, his remaining in office is tantamount to elderly abuse.
It is an awful thing to have to witness this. It’s like watching a friend or loved one struggle enormously in a job at the end of their careers and hang on for too long. This is far worse, and with enormous consequences. Biden is supposed to be reading briefs and papers, and analysing world changes. Travelling in his job is “tiring him”; a “simple cold” incapacities him thinking and speaking clearly at a debate; and that he needs “more sleep”. In effect, this is a declaration that this poor guy is simply not up to the rigors of the office. Instead, we have his obvious confusion. Long drawn silences. The distant-vacant stares. And the awkward smile from spectators and eye-rolls.
Biden’s handlers are disgraceful. Lies, and lies. The more we hear, the clearer it is that they have been deliberately gaslighting journalists who have been persistently asking questions about Biden’s health over the past few years. Even labelling it a Republican conspiracy. If they’d just come clean, they wouldn’t be in this mess now.
E.g. after the Trump-Biden debate, it seems the White House were forced to acknowledge a “neurologist” had visited the President …
Following Joe Biden’s disastrous performance against Donald Trump in their debate on June 27, White House reporters started poring through the visitors log at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. One name kept cropping up again and again: Dr Kevin Cannard. The neurologist and specialist in movement disorders works at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which serves the president. Eagled-eyed journalists spotted that he visited the White House no fewer than eight times between last July and this March. The revelation forced a statement from the White House which suggested Dr Cannard had only seen Biden for his three annual physicals and the other visits were related to military personnel.
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And why are people naturally suspicious?
Part of the reason why the White House’s excuses are wearing thin is that a sceptical public is aware of the long history of various White House administrations keeping the ailments suffered by past presidents secret. Woodrow Wilson suffered a paralysing stroke in 1919 and the severity of his illness was downplayed. For the final two years of his term, all communication with Wilson went through his wife Edith. It was also well known that Franklin D Roosevelt was paralysed from the waist down after contracting polio in 1921. But he carefully cloaked his disability in public using leg braces and gripping the lectern in order to stand for speeches. The press agreed not to photograph or film him in his wheelchair or being lifted out of cars. When the president’s health deteriorated following the Tehran Conference in November 1943, his doctor told the press that Roosevelt was in “robust health” and his stamina was “far above average”. In fact he was suffering from severe hypertension and congestive heart failure. He was advised to limit his work to four hours a day (which was a little tricky with the Second World War still raging) and his smoking. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1945, shortly into his fourth term.
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Why should Biden step down?
As the article noted:
One undernoted issue is that the psychodrama is preventing other senior Democrats from taking the fight to Trump. Partly that’s because they don’t want to be seen as undermining Biden, and partly it’s because the White House won’t let them. “I worry that the core cadre of counsellors around the president continues to put roadblocks in the path of some of our most effective spokespeople,” says Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who worked in the Obama White House. “Part of it seems to stem from a worry that the contrast with the president’s energy and effectiveness on the campaign trail would be put in stark relief.”
People can complain about Trump’s arrant lies … but they won’t affect his support base. President Biden, on the other hand, will dissuade people from voting for him. In the end, it will give Trump the Presidency. It’s an outrageously stupid & dangerous gamble.
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The DT article:
Biden represents many interests behind him. He is a good token as a facade. Squeeze him out for what he is worth. At his terminal phase of his career, he shall have some dignity. That speech impairment would land him in memory support unit of any nursing home.
ReplyDeleteYet people still continue to support him. He is certainly a gift to the orange one's campaign.
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