editorials

Last week, President Joe Biden gave the worst debate performance on the presidential stage in history. Looking ancient, gazing glassyeyed and slack-jawed out of frame, jabbering nonsensically — Donald Trump clocked him with the signally true observation, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he knows what he said either” — Biden not only exposed himself, he exposed his administration and his media lackeys as liars. For years, the American public has believed, correctly, that Joe Biden is not up to the job. The White House lied. They said that he wasn’t just up for the job — he was the most coherent and incisive president in modern history. The media lied, too. They said that behind closed doors, Biden was doing handsprings and reciting the poetry of Virgil backward in the original Latin.

Then Joe Biden went out and demonstrated that he belongs in an old age home. He confirmed what we all knew, live. For 90 minutes.

In doing so, he put everyone around him in a terrible bind. The media were forced to dissociate from Biden, declaring themselves shocked — shocked! — that Biden was sundowning. Biden’s aides, preparing for the inevitable attempt to shift blame from Biden himself to them, began leaking about Biden’s mental incompetence: a report from Axios suggested that Biden’s mental fitness begins around 10 a.m. and ends around 4 p.m.

Meanwhile, Biden’s family — the only group of people who can’t, with any credibility, claim to have been ignorant of his condition — continue to insist that the dementia-ridden president is just fine. That isn’t a shock: the moment Joe isn’t president, the Biden family gravy train, which has been running lucratively for half a century, will come to a grinding halt. Jill Biden — sorry, Doctor Jill Biden — who now resembles a cross between Lady Macbeth and Edith Wilson, would have to get herself elected to play at the presidency; Hunter Biden would have to find a career other than picking up sacks of cash and finger painting; Frank and James might have to find clients who aren’t ready to pony up cash for the privilege of hobnobbing with a Biden.

And the Democratic Party, which nominated Joe Biden because he represents a papering-over of the vast chasms emerging between the pro-Hamas, pro-socialism wing of their party and the more sane, tax-and-regulate left, is stuck in-between. They can’t dump Biden and substitute someone else — to do so would be to admit their complicity in this debacle. And they can’t keep him — to do so would be to doom the Democratic Party to a likely Trump victory, and in the aftermath, the victory of a rebellious hard left demanding more power.

Which is why desperation is now setting in. This week, the Supreme Court issued a relatively non-controversial decision explaining that the president has criminal immunity for core official acts, presumptive immunity but not absolute immunity for other official conduct, and no immunity for unofficial conduct. There is nothing particularly shocking here. But the entire left exploded with the extraordinary lie that the president had been given the power to drone his political opponents. Nobody in the media or on the left truly believes this — but Joe Biden immediately rushed to the microphones to speak for four minutes, blasting the Supreme Court and declaring that if he is not elected, the country will fall into Hitlerism.

It was a divisive, nonsensical, utterly dishonest speech. But this is the situation in which Democrats find themselves: running a mentally incompetent 81-year-old for another four-year term, staring down the barrel of a Donald Trump presidency. They have only themselves to blame. And things only get worse from here.

Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.” To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators. com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM