Thanks Be To God

One story that's been at the back of my mind since I started this blog is the Jason Bourne series of neo-noir movie thrillers, and as the details about Trump's attempted assassination have trickled out, I keep wondering how I might try to fit them into a Robert Ludlum style plot. Let me say from the start that this is pure speculation driven by an overactive literary imagination.

We have Joe, an elderly, shallow, and self-absorbed president who's been propped up by the organs of state security since his time as vice president -- and as best we can determine, his son, a dissipated drug addict, has been one of his closest advisors since that time as well.

Even while Trump was in office, the organs of state security coordinated an effort to impeach Trump on Joe's behalf; since Joe came into office, the same organs assisted the January 6 "insurrection" investigation and either conducted or assisted a series of criminal indictments and civil actions designed to thwart a Trump effort at reelection.

If I were a Robert Ludlum wannabe, I'd at least insert a strong implication that Joe's dissipated drug addict son was one of the inner circle who advised him to use this strategy -- and because it was a product of the son's mind, it backfired spectacularly, with each successive indictment and civil judgment driving Trump's polls higher in the year before the election.

Joe's inner circle, increasingly worried at this trend, devised a strategy in the spring to stop Trump's advance by taking advantage of European trips to commemorate D-Day and meet with the G7 to look presidential on the world stage. They would then capitalize on this by challenging Trump to a take-it-or-leave-it early debate on their rules with friendly moderators, which would have the effect of popping the Trump balloon and returning Joe to presidential status.

But even before the European trips, Trump's standing in the polls continued to be worrisome, and even before the debate, Joe's bizarre episodes on his European trips began seriously to undermine confidence in his cognitive abilities. The debate, instead of rescuing Joe, made Trump look all the more statesmanlike, and polls began to suggest new states were in play on the electoral map.

This prompted new efforts by Joe's advisors, among whom continued to be his dissipated drug addict son, to restore Joe's presidential prestige, which continued to backfire, leading to efforts by his former mentor, Barack Obama, to replace him on the ticket or as president with an unspecified substitute.

At this point we've reached real Robert Ludlum territory. The Hitchcock MacGuffin of the Bourne series is a CIA black operation called Treadstone, which uses brainwashed deep operatives to conduct strategic assassinations. One of these is Jason Bourne, and the action of the series involves Bourne's gradual recognition of his role in Treadstone and his attempt to recover his identity.

If I were a Robert Ludlum wannabe, I'd develop a plot whereby Joe's inner circle, influenced by his dissipated drug addict son, faced with a coup led by Obama and Pelosi, aims to reverse Joe's dilemma by assassinating Trump. At this point, Joe's strong, experienced, steady-handed leadership comes to the fore, and he calms and unifies a stunned nation, winning reelection by a landslide.

Now, to bring this off, the assassin must be someone at Treadstone level. He definitely has to be a good shot. He should have no paper trail -- he should be completely anonymous. Any possible connection to the organs of state security and Joe's dissipated drug addict son must be not just deniable but unthinkable.

This is where I can't help but have questions. We know far less at this stage about Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, the alleged assassin who shot at Trump but killed one other in Pennsylvania yesterday evening, than we learned at the time about Lee Harvey Oswald, Sara Jane Moore, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, or John Hinckley Jr in equivalent circumstances. It took hours for the FBI to identify Crooks at all, and only a few outlets are willing to report even the little we know:

Crooks' father, Matthew Crooks, 53, told CNN that he was trying to figure out what happened and would wait until he spoke to law enforcement before speaking about his son. Thomas Crooks graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He received a $500 "star award" from the National Math and Science Initiative, according to the newspaper.

The problem here is that in the wake of the event, eyewitnesses were claiming that they saw Crooks climbing onto the roof with a gun, tried to notify law enforcement, but law enforcement paid no attention. So naturally, Crooks's father's first instinct is to talk everything over with law enforcement.

Now, I've worked in the crisis management-contingency planning field, and at least I know that under such circumstances, a family needs to designate a spokesperson, possibly a trusted relative or an attorney. I'm puzzled that Crooks's father seems to be so clueless -- someone instead should basically be saying as little as possible to anyone, and that definitely includes law enforcement.

The next question I have is how Crooks got to be such a good shot. He wasn't a perfect shot -- he only grazed Trump's ear -- but he was awfully good, close to Lee Harvey Oswald level. While in the US Marines,

. . . Oswald was tested for marksmanship with his rifle on five different exercises—from 200, 300 and 500 yards firing slowly and from 200 and 300 yards firing rapidly. Based on these results a Marine would be rated by a defined scoring system. . . . in both tests that most closely matched the conditions in the Kennedy assassination for rapid fire shooting Oswald scored above an expert level. Additionally on his third test from 500 yards firing slowly, Oswald scored 46 out of a possible 50: again shooting above an expert level.

Crooks's rooftop was 148 yards from Trump. In contrast, Sara Jane Moore and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme were unable to handle a firearm competently; their attempts to shoot Gerald Ford both failed. John Hinckley Jr shot Reagan with a handgun at close range. Crooks was far more capable with a firearm than any of the other failed assassins.

Although Crooks appears to have been a reclusive who lived with his mother, he had to have received fairly advanced firearms training somewhere. In addition, he lived some 40 miles away from the rally site -- he must have done some detailed planning, or have had planning done for him, to identify the layout of the scene and find an advantageous rooftop. What we know about Crooks doesn't fit with what he appears to have been able almost to bring off.

And then we have the problem of the Secret Service:

Steve Nottingham, a former SWAT commander in Long Beach, California, called Saturday’s shooting “a fundamental security failure.”

He has worked security details for visiting world leaders, including presidents, and now trains officers on how to respond to critical incidents. He pointed at likely breakdowns in the pre-event scouting and real-time monitoring of places a gunman could shoot from.

But one thing definitely worked -- at least, if I were a Robert Ludlum wannabe. Just an instant after Crooks got off his rounds, the Secret Service snipers knew exactly where to shoot, and they blew his head off. Crooks had no ID and had to be identified with DNA. Gee, if they'd caught him climbing onto the roof before he shot, they'd have been able to interrogate him, huh? Well, the crack Secret Service snipers neutralized him instead, just seconds after he shot.

They were all high fivin' each other, from what I read. I think we have a lot to learn. But I'm just a Robert Ludlum wannabe.

UFOs, Ancient Aliens, And The Democrat Race

The impression, possibly fostered by Fr Schmitz and his Bible in a Year podcast, has been forming in my mind for a while that belief in space aliens is a form of idolatry. It's been enough to make me put a limit on the shows I watch on History that cover the subject. Here's an example of what's begun to bother me, an episode of Ancient Aliens that aired Aug 26, 2022:

Ancient cultures around the world often referred to the gods as the "Immortals" - but could they have encountered extraterrestrial beings that had achieved eternal life? And if these visitors genetically engineered the human race, as Ancient Astronaut Theorists suggest, is it our destiny to become immortals as well?

Note how quickly the story elides from archaeology through sci-fi to immortality, which is the province of religion -- if we somehow believe strongly enough that the ancient aliens were immortal, then maybe we can live forever ourselves, or sorta-kinda something like that. Nobody ascribes much to Presbyterianism any more, but the ancient aliens are becoming a real option. Those offer real hope for the human condition!

What interests me is that there's actually so little evidence for extraterrestrial life in the modern era, especially, say, post-1600, and even less now in the era of space probes and radio telescopes, that people are forced to impute evidence of UFOs into Egyptian tomb paintings or Mayan calendars. Doesn't that say something about how little concrete evidence of alien life forms we can find now, using scientific tools?

Actually, there's far more evidence for even the wishy-washiest version of Presbyterianism than there is for space aliens, but this is something millions of people apparently refuse to see. I'm starting to see an oddly similar mindset taking hold among a certain faction of Democrats, to wit, the idea that somewhere out in space, there must be a Democrat who can replace Biden and beat Trump. Douglas Schoen, whom up to now I had thought to be more grounded, writes in The Hill:

[T]here’s no doubt Biden has lost the confidence of his party and the country. I believe the solution — and indeed, a great opportunity for the Democrats — is a truly open, transparent, “blitz primary” that could lead to a truly open convention.

. . . Prominent Democratic strategist James Carville authored his own plan for a mini-primary, suggesting party magnates such as former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would select the eight strongest candidates to sit in a series of town halls moderated by liberal icons such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.

At the convention, delegates would decide on the nominee using ranked choice voting, concluding on the third day. Once a nominee has been crowned, they would appear on stage with Biden and Harris, as well as Obama and Clinton in a demonstration of unity and progress.

Without this, the likely winner — indeed the almost certain winner — of November’s election, will be Donald Trump.

Let me see if I can parse this out. We have the list of usual suspects, starting with Kamala and extending through Newsom and Whitmer until veering into the impossibilities of Pritzer and Shapiro, who are Jewish and won't pass muster with the anti-Semitic wing of the party. Michelle Obama has taken herself out of the running, twice. Of Kamala, Schoen himself says,

Indeed, it is unlikely Harris would be a strong candidate, and she proved to be a less than adept campaigner after dropping out two months before the first primary in 2020.

Schoen goes through the rest of the list and adds a few others -- Pete Buttigieg?? -- and concludes,

While none of these candidates beat Trump in the current polling, a blitz primary would no doubt catapult any one of these individuals into the national spotlight, making up for a lack of familiarity among the broader electorate.

Basically he's hoping that somewhere there's an as-yet-undiscovered generic Democrat, so far completely unknown to the public but in fact known to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who could be found and suddenly shine in an August "blitz primary", who would steal the electorate's heart in a whirlwind romance and beat Trump soundly in November. Someone -- well, someone like Pete Buttigieg, or maybe Beto O'Rourke.

In other words, some pretty-boy young white guy, but without the baggage -- after all, with Buttigieg, where does presumptive first spouse Chasten fit in? You can't call him "first lady", and it's not inclusive to call him "first gentleman" like Doug Emhoff.

I suggested "first f*****" to my wife -- after all, Pope Francis uses the term -- but I think this is all just an example of how wishful any such scenario turns out to be. It's no different from the attempt in 1972 to replace Tom Eagleton with Sargent Shriver -- but I don't think the Democrats have anyone now with even the prestige of Sargent Shriver.

Well, if the ancient aliens are immortal, maybe they can hold a seance or something and rustle one up. He might just fit the bill. Erich von Däniken himself, though, is 89. Cross him off the list.

Good Enough?

I didn't watch Joe's big boy press conference last night, but I did check the aggregators later to see if there'd been any major blunders. My sense of things was that, although he'd started out by misgendering Vice Preasident Trump, his performance was good enough:

The Democrat Party is left in limbo as President Joe Biden’s NATO press conference avoided total disaster despite several gaffes, and it could stave off internal efforts among Democrats to remove him as the nominee in the immediate future.

. . . Biden’s former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on MSNBC that she thinks the press conference “gave [Biden’s campaign] more time, which for the campaign is a win.”

Nevertheless, the consensus that seems to be emerging is more aligned with Susan Glasser in the New Yorker:

And sure enough, Biden was barely into his first response before he let loose another gaffe, arguably even cringier than the first. Asked about Vice-President Kamala Harris and her ability to step in for him if need be, Biden responded by saying, “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice-President Trump to be Vice-President if I think she was not qualified to be President.” This time, he did not even spot the error.

. . . But, for those who listened to the full hour of Biden’s press conference, it wasn’t, in the end, the gaffe that made this a poor performance. It was Biden’s over-all halting, painful delivery. It was his struggle to find words, and the fact that when he did find them they were often not the right ones. Most important, it was his inability to make the case for himself—and his difficulty prosecuting the case against Trump.

Mark Leibovitch wrote this in The Atlantic before the press conference:

Never underestimate the destructive power of a stubborn old narcissist with something to prove.

Ideally no one gets hurt along the way: Maybe grandpop refuses to give up his license, drives into an oak tree, and only the car gets totaled. But sometimes there are casualties[.]

. . . President Joe Biden, 81, is acting like one of history’s most negligent and pigheaded leaders at a crucial moment, and right now, we are all pedestrians.

Since his debate debacle nearly two weeks ago, much of America has been locked into the classic “Will he or won’t he?” cliffhanger. Will Biden step aside and not run for reelection, as massive majorities of voters have for years said they want him to do? Or will he persist in pursuing one of the most ill-fated and ill-advised presidential campaigns ever carried out?

. . . As of now, it looks as if Biden is committed to “riding this out” and “staying the course,” no matter how unfit he might be for the ugly course ahead. This is, maddeningly, the only consideration that now matters, because Biden is the ultimate decision maker.

According to Axios,

Democrats who were bracing for the worst out of President Biden's press conference at the NATO summit instead saw a passable performance – but it doesn't appear to have calmed Capitol Hill's panic around his candidacy.

. . . One senior House Democrat, asked it the press conference would quiet the uproar on Capitol Hill, told Axios "probably not," while another said "not quite, but almost."

Said another House Democrat: "Tonight he looked better than the debate, but still not enough to recover and beat Donald Trump."

So for now, the emerging situation seems to be that Trump is at minimum expected to do much better than he did in either 2016 or 2020, while the main obstacle for Democrats is Joe Biden himself. The party is consumed by controversy over whether to replace him as a candidate, but even if it were to agree to do this, there's no concrete plan of action, and other than Kamala Harris, there's no clear substitute. Nor is there any assurance that Harris would do any better against Trump.

Meanwhile, the longer the uncertainty drags out, the less time is available for a replacement Democrat candidate to unify the party or organize a campaign operation, and the less pressure is on Trump to do strenuous campaigning while the Democrats self-immolate in full view.

Right now, I still think the closest parallel to this year's campaign is 1972, except that the foreordained loser this year is the incumbent, not the challenger. It doesn't mean as much if the challenger has no credibility, as McGovern didn't have, and the Democrats were able to disavow him as a representative Democrat in the wake of his loss, while they soon enough recovered their credibility by shifting the focus to Nixon with Watergate.

The problem for 2024 is that Biden is the incumbent Democrat unifier and elder statesman.

"I Sorta Got On My Knees And Begged Him."

Biden describes giving NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg the Medal of Freedom: "I sorta got on my knees and begged him." pic.twitter.com/ONvsEIcWbC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 11, 2024

It took me some time to connect the dots between two cryptic clips of Joe's remarks surrounding the NATO summit yesterday. It looks as though he was trying to tell some sort of private joke that stayed in his mind over two separate contexts.

The clip above was in a discussion with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while the clip belolw that more or less explains it was made at the NATO summit itself in a direct exchange with retiring Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

😳Oh boy…
“I realize after _____ing your wife. “

“I personally ask you to extend your service….laughs......... Forgive me?”

⁉️What did Joe just say he was doing to his wife? pic.twitter.com/KHi4bojNfY

— RoamingRN (@roaming_rn) July 9, 2024

Nobody is quite sure what the word was as Joe slurred out "_____ing", but I'm with those who think it was indeed _____. As best I can reconstruct what was going on in the presidential brain, the story he was trying to tell was that he was getting down on his knees and begging, but the person he somehow meant to be begging wasn't Secretary General Stoltenberg, it was the Secretary General's wife, or something like that. Yuk, yuk, huh?

As I said when Joe violated diplomatic protocols at the G7, including forehead-bumping Pope Francis, meetings at that level are intricately pre-scripted, and there are meant to be no surprises, especially not in the public exchanges. Ronald Reagan did not share toidy jokes with Margaret Thatcher no matter how much they may have agreed in their respective agendas.

At the very best, what this suggests is that Joe had basically lost situational awareness: this was a diplomatic summit at which nobody jokes about diddling the wives of other high-level diplomats, but Joe just had to get out a giggly sort of barb that nobody quite understood, but it had apparently been on his mind for hours. In this, he did nobody any favors.

But this turned out not to be the only time sex was on his mind yesterday -- he dropped by an AFL-CIO meeting and came up with this:

BIDEN: "I look back now and wonder how my dad handled those thin walls" 😳 pic.twitter.com/cMgtH5VBCW

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 10, 2024

As this commentator said, "This is what happens when Biden speaks without a teleprompter." He tells private jokes that either nobody quite gets, or if they get them, it makes them uncomfortable. On one hand, the experimental data that backs up the Dunning-Kruger effect involves people who tell jokes that nobody thinks are funny, but on the other, that a US president would routinely do this sort of thing, especially in a diplomatic context, is worrisome.

Nevertheless,

An embattled President Biden is set to stage a “big-boy” press conference Thursday afternoon — the first since his disastrous debate performance threw his 2024 re-election campaign into utter disarray.

The 81-year-old plans to close out the NATO summit in Washington — an event meant to showcase his leadership on the world stage — with the rare, solo news conference as he scrambles to prove to the American public that he’s capable of serving another four years.

The commander-in-chief is scheduled to take questions from the White House press corps at 5:30 p.m.

Beyond that,

President Joe Biden is slated to participate in a one-on-one interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, as the 81 year old continues to stand defiantly in his decision to remain in the presidential race, despite the pleas of some very well-known Democrats.

NBC’s Monica Alba announced the upcoming interview, writing on X, “BREAKING: @NBCNews anchor Lester Holt will sit down with President Biden for an exclusive one-on-one interview on Monday in Austin, Texas.”

The only thing that comes to mind here is "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Why are Hunter and Dr Jill still putting him up to this? One theory is that Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer have begun to lose patience, and they're telling Joe he's got to do more to prove he's healthy enough to continue. In this scenario, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force, and Joe is convinced that all he needs is one good performance to pull it off -- not just to keep the nomination, but in fact to win in November.

Another scenario might be that Hunter and Dr Jill know it's a lost cause, but they aren't yet ready to throw in the towel. Letting Joe do one last press conference, one last interview, maintains the fantasy for just a few more days, and they'll deal with next week when they come to it.

But it's hard to imagine that in the context of June's repetitive disasters, anyone seriously thinks Joe is in a position to rescue his candidacy and turn things around in the next few days, especially given his performance yesterday.

UPDATE: Today's "big boy" press conference has been moved back from 5:30 to 6:45.

So, Why Has The Press Suddenly Turned On Biden?

Whether it's thought to be a cynical betrayal or a belated acknowledgement of the obvious, there's been a general recognition that the legacy media -- more or less except for MSNBC -- has turned against Biden in its news coverage and often editorially called for Joe to "step aside", although without explaining precisely what that should imply. Piers Morgan sums it up at the New York Post:

The US mainstream media are currently gorging on President Biden’s cognitive decline like ravenous hyenas on the freshly slain carcass of a decrepit old buffalo.

In fact, since his train-wreck debate debacle, the nation’s predominantly liberal-skewed, Democrat-defending journalists have competed with each other as to who can sound the most faux shocked, horrified, appalled, and furrowed-brow-uncomprehending about the physical and mental state of their president.

But why? I think if Rush Limbaugh were still around, he'd give the same reason he gave at the end of his life as Trump left the White House at the end of his first term: ratings. Whatever the media thought of Trump, they got ratings when they covered him, and they lost those ratings when he was out of the news. For instance:

CNN has seen ratings plummet since former President Donald Trump left the White House, according to a Fox News report on Nielsen Media Research data.

The network averaged 2.5 million primetime viewers between the day after the election— November 4, 2020 — and Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021, Fox News reported.

Since President Joe Biden was sworn in, however, those numbers have dropped dramatically. An average of 1.6 million viewers tuned in during primetime hours between January 21 and March 15, Fox News said. That's a downturn of 36% since Biden took office.

So why did CNN, of all networks, host the first debate? As homicide detectives say, there's no such thing as a coincidence. Why did ABC hold the interview with George Stephanopoulos? Again, no coincidence. Biden supporters nevertheless accuse the media of stirring up the controversy over Biden's cognitive decline instead of blandly outlining Joe's steady hand, decency, and years of experience. Well, why aren't they?

Part of the problem is simple -- if it bleeds, it leads. The commander in chief is sick, but if that's not bad enough, the White House is covering it up. But that doesn't seem to be the full explanation. Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge quotes extensively from the Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, in an opinion piece there behind a paywall:

the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself[.]

. . . They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe.

You [the Democratic machine] don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity – and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s ‘bedtime for Bonzo’ – thanks for your service, and let’s move on.

Except that News Corp, the Murdoch vehicle that owns the Wall Street Journal, was consistently Never Trump throughout this same period, and it was just as complicit as any other legacy outlet in perpetuating the idea that boring Biden was preferable to tempestuous Trump. Gerry Baker here is doing nothing but limning the same faux shocked, horrified, appalled, and furrowed-brow-uncomprehending schtick of all his colleagues.

In fact, even before the June 27 debate, it was recognized that in its initial early June story that made it OK to talk about Joe's cognitive decline, the WSJ was simply giving everyone a permission slip, not covering anything new. I quoted Greg Gutfeld at the time:

The Wall Street Journal revealed that Joe Biden may be suffering cognitive decline. Talk about breaking news. Nice work there, Wall Street Journal!

So, although nearly every legacy outlet from CNN through ABC and NBC to Fox is cashing in on the Joe-is-senile stampede, there may even be a faint element of remorse in the brow furrowing. This goes back to the origin of the 2024 constitutional crisis, which stems from the "stolen" 2020 election. I've been saying that the current crisis of succession is actually very similar to the 1972-74 Watergate succession crisis, which in turn was caused by the conditions of the 1972 election and the failure of the Democrats to run a viable opponent to Nixon.

As I've been pointing out, in order to get a Nixon resignation, it was necessary to get Agnew to resign first and replace him with the safe and boring Gerald Ford, who in turn was replaced by the uber-lizard-person Nelson Rockefeller. This all was needful to mitigate the effect of Nixon's 1972 landslide victory over McGovern and restore center-left credibility, which it did in large part by demonizing Nixon and allowing the national media to portray themselves as saviors and heroes.

So the Watergate crisis was something that extended over a period of years. I think the 2024 constitutional crisis has been building even longer -- it arguably started when Trump announced his first candidacy in 2015, became more acute with his 2016 surprise victory, and grew even more problematic through two unsuccessful impeachments, the questionable 2020 Biden election victory, the January 6 committee, and now the revelations that, enabled by rhe establishment media, the Democrats concealed Biden's cognitive decline over a period that probably began while he was vice president.

But at the root of both the Watergate crisis and the 2024 crisis is the failure of the Democrats to nominate a viable presidential candidate. The difference is that in 1972, McGovern was recognized from the start as a foreordained loser, to the point that no serious Democrat would agree to run as his vice presidential nominee. In 2024, the election was at least politely handicapped as a "tossup", and up to the events of June, establishment media was complicit in concealing Biden's actual condition.

One aspect of how the 2024 crisis is resolved will be, as in 1972-4, the need for legacy media to rehabilitate its credibility in the crisis's wake. They'll need to find new Woodwards and Bernsteins at minimum. This is partly what's happening now -- Jake Tapper is in the running. Even Jen Psaki's got herself a new face, don't count her out.

Jen Psaki totally had plastic surgery. She looks different. https://t.co/8in1xjFQCM

— Cecilia Glennon (@CeciliaGlennon) December 15, 2023

The auditions for the next Woodward and Bernstein are already under way.

A Lie Is As Good As A Confession

Regarding what may or may not ail Joe, I'm not qualified to say, except that the media has suddenly taken a lot of interest in the question. What intrigues me is the evasiveness of the White House's attempts to answer the questions from the press. I know almost nothing about Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, but as a truie crime fan who reads and watches the insights of detectives about interrogation, I've learned a few things about lying -- and in particular, the truism that a lie is as good as a confession.

In other words, if you can catch someone in a definite lie, you're starting to get a road map to just what it is they're trying to cover up. It's hard to avoid thinking that Press Secretary Jean-Pierre is displaying signs of lying in her answers to a couple of the questions she was asked in her press briefing yesterday. The relevant sequence starts at about 38:00

Q: When you were here last Tuesday, you were asked if the president had had any medical examinations [unintelligible] including the time period after the debate, and you said flately, "no". A few days later, you admitted the president had had a short checkin thereafter. Those are two very different. . .

KJP: . . . To answeer your point, he did not have a medical exam, he did not have a physical, he did like a verbal checkin with his doctor a couple days after the debate, and it was very quick, it was a couple of words that were spoken to each other, and that's how we were able to give you that answer, he did not haver a medical exam, he did not have a physical. . . I did not mean to steer anybody wrong, I was still thinking about the physical, that's how I answered the question, . . . and that's when we went back and asked the medical doctor, and he said they had a verbal checkin.

Q: [Regarding the frequent visits of a Parkinson's specialist over the past several months,] Could you state very clearly, yes or no, was that expert here to participate in anything surrounding the care of the President of the United States?

KJP: So let me just say a couple things. We have had a comprehensive -- I just want to take another step back, a comprehensive physical examination, the president has had that, we've given a comprehensive report, we've shared that the past three years, every year that he has, every year that he has had this exam, he sees a neurologist, and, uh, just to give you a quote from that, the report most recently in February, an extremely detailed neurological exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which wokuld be consistgent with any cerebellar or central neurologicsl disorders such as a stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons's, ascending lateral sclerosis, end quote, so that came from, in February, that comprehensive report trhat was prepared by the president's doctor, that I shared with all of you, so anybody who is watching can certainly go to our website.

Several things pop out at me, and they're covered in typical "how to tell if someone is lying" sites, for instance this one:

Liars will often repeat themselves ad nauseam when telling a half-truth or a complete falsehood. This is done for three reasons. First, they will repeat a lie over and over in order to solidify the ‘facts’ in their mind, so they can stick to their story. Secondly, they’re trying to convince you that they’re telling the truth by solidifying their words in your mind. Lastly, they repeat themselves in order to buy time to come up with the next part of their story. If they were telling the truth, they’d be able to recall everything without thinking about it.

. . . When a person gives too much information when questioned, it’s because they have rehearsed in their head exactly what to say, and exactly how to say it. They also feel that if they’re able to give a full story, they’re more likely to be believed. However, this often just shows they’ve anticipated what the other person will say next, and jump right into answering subsequent questions before the questions have even been asked. If someone seems to immediately have every answer for all the questions you have for them, they’ve most likely constructed a huge lie in their head and are ready to stick to it no matter what.

This is a useful observation:

The research conducted at the University of Michigan found “speaking with more vocal fill” to be a common indicator of deception. Glass says that people tend to use these words more when they’re trying to buy time to figure out what they’re going to say next.

This is a big tell:

When someone is lying, they might avoid answering your question directly. Instead, they might try to change the subject or deflect the conversation away from themselves.

This is one of the tested and most common signs of lying. If you notice someone doing this, it’s a good sign that they’re not being truthful with you. They will slowly try to shift the conversation to another topic to take the focus off of themselves.

It’s just what most people call “red handed.” It’s not usual to see a person try so hard to avoid a certain topic, so if you sense this, then it’s a positive sight that they are lying.

In the press briefing, Ms Jean-Pierre was directly asked a yes-or-no question, which she promptly evaded by providing too much information and never answering yes or no. I have no idea what the truth is that she was trying to conceal, but the pattern of her answers suggests she's trying to conceal something.

Beyond that, who knows?

Dark Brandon Is Coming Back

Voter: We need Dark Brandon back

President Biden: Dark Brandon is coming back

Voters: *burst into applause* pic.twitter.com/fBPL01ReeK

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 7, 2024

So the latest we hear is that Joe has written a letter to congressional Democrats this morning saying it's time to end talk of his withdrawing. This comes as reports from last week indicate that his inner circle of advisers has shrunk to Hunter, Dr Jill, and the Rasputin-like Anthony Bernal. Bernal, who as we've seen often represents himself to the rest of the White House staff as speaking for "the family", seems to be behind reports that the family blames staff for his poor performance in the June 27 debate.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that

A senior White House official who has worked with President Biden since his days as vice president reportedly joined the growing chorus of calls urging him against running for reelection.

That unnamed official, described as working with Biden, 81, throughout his vice presidency, 2020 campaign and presidency explained to the New York Times that observing him in private and during travels together made clear that the Democrat doesn’t have what it takes to defeat Donald Trump.

This sent me searching for possible names. Among those mentioned as helping with his debate prep, Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, come to mind, but both worked for Obama for only brief periods, and the same applies to their work in the Biden White House. A better candidate might be Mike Donilon. According to Wikipedia,

Between 2009 and 2013,he served as Counselor to Vice President Biden in the Obama administration. Before his White House appointment, Donilon worked with the vice-presidential candidate to help him prepare for the debates and as a traveling advisor.

Donilon became a Senior Advisor to the President at the start of Joe's term in January 2021. Another possibility could be Ron Klain, who was Joe's Chief of Staff as vice president from 2009 to 2011 and his Chief of Staff as president from 2021 to 2023. However, he didn't work with Joe "throughout his vice presidency" as Donilon did, and although he returned to help Biden prepare for the June 27 debate, he hasn't worked in the White House since he left last year. Nevertheless, this piece in Newsweek by Ladan Rafii outlines the overall problem for anyone who's advised Joe:

When it comes to Biden, the only close adviser I once knew is his former White House chief of staff and trusted confidant, Ron Klain.

You see, I attended Georgetown University with him many years ago, and we took the same course in U.S. politics. There weren't that many of us, so we were in a small classroom sitting in close proximity to one another.

. . . I was impressed (if not amazed) by his level of intellect. Time and time again, in every class we had, he revealed this to us—without any arrogance, but with a measure of confidence that made us all take note of him.

. . . Which is why I'm having such difficulty believing and processing what happened just a few nights ago.

I learned from a New York Times report that Ron left the White House last year to become chief legal officer of Airbnb. I wondered about that. Knowing how smart he was, I thought maybe he no longer wanted to be associated with what he perceived to be a sinking ship.

Anyone as clever as him would certainly know when he's on board one, and take the right measures to make sure he jumps off it when the first signs appear and the ship begins to teeter.

. . . Then in mid-May, there was an article stating that he was taking a break from his Airbnb job to return to the White House, and help prepare Biden for his debate with Trump.

Apparently, Ron is known in Washington, D.C. circles for being one of the best debate trainers in town. He's very sharp and astute with a depth of political knowledge and experience very few can match.

. . . [He said imn the article,] "We need to have debates where the candidates get equal time . . . where the American people can compare the two people who are the leading candidates for president."

Well, Ron, we certainly got to do that on Thursday. Maybe more than you would have ever wanted or known. As they say: In life, be careful what you wish for.

These days I often ask myself: What happened to the Ron Klain I once knew? He had all the answers back then, so where are his answers now? How could he have let such a calamity happen on live television in front of a global audience of tens of millions?

. . . Please give us the right answer, Mr. Klain.

It's beginning to sound as though some of Joe's long-term, highly capable advisers had begun to lose confidence long before the current campaign season. This retrospective by William A Jacobson at the Legal Insurrection aggregator lists some of the warnings everyone had been ignoring:

There has been a grand coverup of Joe Biden’s cognitive problems by Democrats with a big assist from the media. There is now faux contrition beginning to come out from the media, but don’t believe them. Defeating Trump in 2020 squelched the story, and they tried it again in 2024.

I’m so old, I remember when Biden’s cognitive problems were an issue in 2020, raised by Democrats in the primaries. We knew then. A lot of people knew then.

We covered it. We even started a Tag Biden Cognitive. I wrote about it. Stacey wrote about it. Mike wrote about it.

He starts a long list with this tweet from Jake Tapper from as long ago as 2019:

We’re starting to hear more Democrats publicly expressing doubts like this one about Biden. He’s been gaffe-prone for much of his career so presumably they think this is something else. https://t.co/jXXThBEryu

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 9, 2019

So it's starting to sound like even some of Joe's longest and most loyal retainers had begun to lose confidence in him, like apparently Ron Klain as of early last year, and according to the UK Daily Mail,

A simmering rift between Joe Biden's family and staff has finally boiled over after his disastrous debate performance last week.

. . . Fallout from the debate gave Biden's family, including his disgraced son Hunter, ammunition to settle old scores with his staff and be more involved.

They blame his staff for failing to adequately prepare him for the debate and more broadly for not putting him in a position to show his strengths.

'I believe the family has witnessed blunder after blunder by key staff personnel and the debate is likely the straw that broke the camel's back,' one of 13 sources close to the president told NBC.

. . . 'The debate fiasco has opened up a lane for the family to surpass staff and start helping out their father and brother who they love dearly,' another insider said.

So it looks like the upshot's going to be the return of Dark Brandon. It seems to me that it's hard to underestimate the counterproductive effect of the combined advice Joe's been given by both his staff and his family over the past several years -- consider the whole "lawfare" campaign that's done nothing but drive Trump's poll numbers up from the start of the indictments last year. More recently we've seen the utterly calamitous effect of scheduling the early debate soon after Joe's two trips to Europe, which themselves simply set up the questions about his health that the debate only exacerbated.

Well, we're hearing rumbles that there will be resignations by Biden staff over the coming week. The most we can conclude is that the crazies are fully in control, and they're unleashing Dark Brandon again.