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ANDREW NEIL: The lies told from the heart of the White House to hide the truth about Biden's mental decline are a cover-up to put Watergate in the shade
The Democratic Party strategy to re-elect Joe Biden as U.S. President was simple and stark: Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, so it is the constitutional duty of all patriotic Americans to stop him ever returning to the White House. Vote for Joe!
Given Trump's behaviour on January 6, 2021, when he did nothing — until it was almost too late — to dissuade a vast mob of his supporters from storming Capitol Hill to overturn the 2020 presidential election, it was a legitimate strategy with traction among voters. The polls showed it. America's overwhelmingly pro-Democratic media pushed it.
And it has been smashed to smithereens by the very people who devised it.
We now know that those closest to President Biden in the White House and at the top of the Democratic National Committee (which is controlled by the White House) have been lying to the American people for months, nay years, about Biden's fitness to run for a second term.
When those at the heart of government and in control of the governing party are prepared to lie, dissemble and obfuscate to hide the truth from the people — and the plain, unexpurgated truth is that Biden is clearly in no condition to run for, never mind serve, a second term — I think it's fair to conclude that those doing the lying are at least as big a threat to democracy as Trump.
There are questions surrounding U.S. President Joe Biden's fitness to run for a second term
Several reports have appeared suggesting former president Barack Obama has concluded privately that Biden cannot run for the White House again
It is vital to America and its allies that whoever inhabits the Oval Office is in firm command of their faculties. In their own self-serving interest Team Biden insisted this was true of their man, even as evidence mounted that it was blatantly not the case. The untruths emanated from the very top.
Briefed by Jeff Zients, Biden's chief of staff, and Karine Jean-Pierre, his hapless press secretary, as well as the many acolytes spinning furiously beneath them, a compliant, client media lapped it up.
There are roughly ten Democrats for every Republican in mainstream American newsrooms. They faithfully reported what they were told: how sharp, savvy and coherent the President was in meetings with his staff and visitors.
I remember, almost a year ago now, saying to one White House insider that I thought Biden looked increasingly doddery and incapable of running again. I was told in no uncertain terms that, unlike this insider, I had not seen Biden operate behind closed doors, where he was 'sharp as a tack'.
I wasn't convinced. I was being asked to believe that someone who increasingly stumbled over his words — and his feet — in public was somehow magically transformed in private. I asked if any of these sessions illustrating his brilliance had been videoed. Our conversation came to an abrupt end.
Anybody who dared question the prevailing narrative was denounced as a Trump lackey and a peddler of fake news. Some were even excluded from administration briefings on key policy matters.
This was a cover-up to put Watergate in the shade. It was exposed as such in that fateful TV debate with Trump at the end of last month when Biden suffered a slow-motion car crash from which he has not recovered.
Even then the White House lies did not stop. We were told it was just a bad night, that he had a cold, that he was suffering from jet lag. The excuses tumbled out from Team Biden, each one less credible than the last. But something significant had changed: even Jet-Lag Joe's media cheerleaders no longer believed what they were being told.
Democrat donor George Clooney has issued a plea for Joe Biden to step down
Asked to choose between White House spin and what they'd seen with their own eyes, even partisan journalists chose their eyes. So did the American people. A huge majority now believes Biden is unfit to run again. A clear majority of registered Democrats agrees.
Now it is open season on Biden, from the Left and the Right. A steady drip-drip of prominent Democratic politicians, accompanied by the party's loyalists in the media and Hollywood, are calling on him to stand aside and let someone else have a go at beating Trump, since the polls increasingly show that he can't.
But Biden is tenacious. He spent 50 years coveting the White House and is not about to give it up without a struggle, especially since his wife is not inclined to do the decent thing.
Many senior Democrats had hoped Jill Biden would take her husband aside and gently tell him it was time to make way for a new generation. But she loves being First Lady and is even less inclined to quit than Joe. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden, given his many legal woes, has his own reasons for wanting his father to stay in power.
But a growing number of Democrat members of the House of Representatives are openly turning against the President — 17 at the time of writing — and a couple of senators have said the same. However, this steady drip-drip is, as yet, nowhere near a tsunami strong enough to sweep him away.
Even so, the ground does seem to be crumbling beneath his uncertain feet. Thursday night's press conference was not a disaster on quite the same scale as the debate. But it hardly helped Biden's case that he is compos mentis, never mind competent, when just before the conference he introduced Ukraine's President Zelensky as President Putin, or that he called Kamala Harris 'Vice President Trump'.
'He left us in purgatory,' said one veteran Democratic loyalist.
Keep an eye on Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House and fellow gerontocrat. Obama remained loyal after the debate car crash — 'bad debate nights happen' — but he seems to be moving towards the 'Dump Biden' camp.
Though he perhaps did not instigate George Clooney's plea for Biden to step down, those who know both are in no doubt the Hollywood star ran it past his close friend before publication in the New York Times.
Obama made no effort to dissuade him. Indeed he might even have made a few suggestions to toughen up the text. Several reports have appeared suggesting Obama has concluded privately that Biden cannot run again.
Biden cannot appeal to Obama's wife, Michelle, for support. She has been out of sorts with the Biden family since Hunter's divorce of her close friend, Kathleen Buhle. She thinks the Bidens have treated Buhle shabbily, showing no compassion or concern for the traumas Hunter put her through.
For his part, Barack Obama has never rated Biden. He kept him sidelined as vice president for eight years and rarely listened to his advice (which included urging Obama not to kill Osama Bin Laden).
He also pressed Biden not to run for president in 2016. If the Obama clan has turned against Biden, then it really is curtains for him.
Then there is Pelosi, whose advice Biden is said to rate. She made an unhelpful intervention on TV this week, saying she'd back Biden whatever he decided but that he had to make up his mind... Which was strange since Biden had already said he had made up his mind — he was running.
The most ominous development for Biden as this weekend approached were reports that Obama and Pelosi were in private discussions over how to orchestrate his removal as his party's candidate.
If that turns out to be the case, the dam would well and truly burst, leaving Biden no option but to step aside before the Democratic convention in Chicago next month.
No amount of White House lying could cope with an Obama-Pelosi double act against the President. Chicago would turn into a bunfight involving those who think the crown should fall automatically to Vice President Kamala Harris and those who want an open contest between half a dozen hopefuls.
As the White House moved to shore up Biden's position after the debate, it tried to turn the spotlight on the many lies Trump had told during it. Fair enough. Trump is often a stranger to the truth. But it somehow lacked force coming from folks who'd been rumbled for lying through their teeth themselves.
Nor has it dawned on Biden that by putting himself before party and country, he is guilty of the very narcissism of which he's often (rightly) accused Trump.
By clinging on when a graceful exit is required, Biden is not only increasing Trump's chances of winning in November but turning himself into a figure more Trump-like than he could ever have imagined.