That Brilliant PoliticalTactician Dr Jill Is Calling The Shots

In yesterday's post I found myself scratching my head about key decisions Joe's handlers have made leading up to Thursday's debate. The biggest puzzle was why they made Trump the take-it-or-leave-it offer for the historically early first debate in June, when debates have normally taken place much later in the campaign. This will have the effect of tiring Joe out months earlier than would normally happen, but they also scheduled the debate for just two weeks after exhausting trips to Europe for the D-Day commemoration and G7, items they were fully aware of before offering the June 27 date.

But I also noted that the handlers seem deliberately to have set up Thursday's video scene of Joe shuffling from Air Force One to Marine One en route to his debate prep at Camp David, when two months before, they'd made the decision to have White House staff escort Joe on those same walks to Marine One and surround him to shield the view of precisely his same shuffling gait. In other words, someone is making remarkably self-defeating decisions. It reminds me of an old standup line:

Yesterday, the Polish defense ministry announced they had successfully tested Poland's first nuclear bomb over Warsaw. Asked why they would test a nuclear weapon over their own capital city, they replied, "Exactly. That's why we did it at night."

But this morning, via the Gateway Pundit, I read of another inexplicable move:

Given how much former President Donald Trump loves to get the final word in on any issue, one would assume that President Joe Biden would cherish the chance to strip his predecessor of getting a last word in, especially in a debate setting.

One would assume wrong.

According to CNN, which will host the first debate, Biden won a crucial coin flip ahead of the June 27 debate.

The coin, which turned up tails, gave Team Biden the option to choose between either podium position or the order in which closing remarks are delivered.

The incumbent, apparently, opted to lock in his podium position — a seemingly far lesser advantage than choosing the order of closing statements.

. . . Team Trump then chose to have Biden deliver the first set of closing remarks, giving the former president the true last word for the upcoming debate.

Jim Messina, who was the former campaign manager for Barack Obama and someone “in close contact with Biden’s team,” explained why Biden chose the podium position, per ABC News.

“As to why Biden chose the right-side podium after winning the coin flip, Messina said Biden just ‘likes’ that side and it’s a ‘personal preference,'” the outlet noted.

Exactly. That's why we did it at night.

So who are Joe's handlers, the "Biden's team" who make these key decisions? Nick Arama at Red State raises the likeliest possibility. He cites CBS reporter Weijia Jiang, who says, "I'm told that we should expect some surprises." But Arama asks,

She mentioned how he was prepping with his closest advisors. But these are the same guys who have advised him forever. Translation: These are the same guys who have been producing the mess that is Joe Biden that we've already seen every day.

Or put another way, how is same-old-same-old going to come up with "surprises"? And more to the point, who are these people? Nobody says much about this, but the closest I've been able to find is a story at Axios from Wednesday:

Biden's inner circle is cohesive but insular: Aides joke that there's an unofficial "no new friends rule."

The group includes First Lady Jill Biden's top aide, Anthony Bernal, and new Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini — low-profile but powerful aides who have worked mostly for the Bidens since 2008 and are known for their focus on loyalty.

When Tomasini was still head of Oval Office operations last year, she and Bernal surprised people by sitting in on interviews for Biden's campaign manager, a person involved in the process told Axios. A source familiar with the interviews told Axios: "This was not a surprise. Annie and Anthony are part of the senior advisers group, and every senior adviser was part of the interviews."

The name Anthony Bernal had a familiar ring. Via the New York Post,

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to say Thursday if first lady Jill Biden is shielding her “work husband” Anthony Bernal from verbal sexual harassment and bullying allegations — while saying she respects Bernal and considers him a “friend,” outraging his accusers.

Jean-Pierre defended Bernal — widely regarded as one of the most powerful White House officials — when a Post reporter pressed her about accusations from Democratic aides who have worked with him, including a trio of sources who said Bernal often speculates on the penis sizes of coworkers in a #MeToo power play.

Wait a moment -- I thought Second Dude Doug Emhoff was Dr Jill's "work husband", or at least that's how it seemed when they French kissed each other at last year's State of the Union. So I looked up the term and found this thread on reddit:

When I hear "work spouse", I think of a couple that is closer with one another than with anyone else in the company, that spends a lot of time together, that is very familiar with each others' private lives etc. And when I hear "they had an affair", my first reaction is "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise".

. . . Had a coworker tell me she’s my work wife and I’m her work husband. I shut that down real quick. Sounds creepy and weird and not platonic at all.

. . . That’s sounds like some dumb [redacted] people come up with when they have too much time in their hands. Doesn’t seem like a good idea either way. You can just say work friend or friend. Why put a layer of weird on it.

All I can conclude is that Joe's inner circle involves "work spouses", they're making the big decisions, it isn't platonic at all, and there's a layer of weird on it. I suspect Joe is normally too out of it even to be consulted on any of this stuff.

Any surprises that come out of Thursday's debate aren't going to be good at all.