Pirate's Cove

The one year anniversary of the Biden-Trump debate that destroyed Biden’s 2nd term aspirations will be June 27th, and featured one of the most devastating lines ever in a presidential debate: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, I don’t think he knows what he said either.” And the Washington Post EB is now on the case, after the cancer diagnosis

Was Biden too frail for the job? Voters should have been informed.

Former president Joe Biden’s announcement that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer is a sad reminder that none of us, even the mightiest, is immune to the illnesses that arrive with age. Americans rightly wish for him a successful treatment.

The timing of this news is particularly difficult, coming just as CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios journalist Alex Thompson release “Original Sin,” their chronicle of Biden’s cognitive decline. They describe how his mental slips accumulated during his presidency, leading to his disastrous performance last June at a debate with Donald Trump, and his subsequent exit from the presidential race.

Biden is owed respect for his decades of public service. But the office he held must be respected, too, and this is why, despite his latest malady, the public conversation must continue about his — and all other presidents’ — fitness for office.

The U.S. presidency is the biggest, most taxing job there is, demanding an almost superhuman level of basic intelligence, clear thinking and wisdom. In addition to managing a policy agenda, negotiating with foreign leaders, making legislative deals and representing the nation at home and abroad, the president also must be prepared to handle an unexpected crisis at any hour of the day or night.

Quite frankly, I’m less concerned about his cancer diagnosis in regards to doing the job than his mental issues, which we all saw during the 2020 general election. And we all saw getting worse. Perhaps if the Washington Post news division did their job and demanded answers we could have gotten answers. There’s also a chance that Biden has had the prostate cancer for a while now, and that the medication and treatment made his dementia even worse. The guy who was leading the world into WWIII

It now seems that, for a considerable time, Biden might have lacked the stamina and cognitive capacity the job demands — and that his family and closest aides concealed this from the public. Their apparent decision to put personal loyalties ahead of their duty to the country must be reckoned with. A legal mechanism should be considered to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

If only there were people who could investigate, people mentioned specifically by the 1st Amendment so that the government could not retaliate for investigating and exposing the government.

The people closest to Biden could hardly have avoided observing his infirmity — indeed, the actions they took to hide it indicate that they knew all too well. Early issues surfaced in the 2020 campaign, when he had memory lapses, including forgetting the name of one of his closest advisers and the opening lines to the Declaration of Independence. A Democrat interviewed by Tapper and Thompson who was involved in making Zoom videos of Biden speaking to constituents during the pandemic lockdown said that, after watching hours of mostly unusable footage, they concluded he was incapable of doing the job.

And, yet, none of those in the media or the Dem party exposed this at the time. They sat on it. Anyhow, this goes on and on for a bit (you can pull it from the paywall at Archive), ending with

In a democracy, the voters, when selecting a commander in chief, need to be discerning, to elevate candidates who have the stamina and the smarts to serve. Four years later, they can assess that person’s ability to take on another term. If problems arise between elections, then White House officials and Congress must be counted on to responsibly act.

Is the WPEB going to sit there and say reporters didn’t know? I do not remember the WP or the EB calling for an investigation into Biden at any point. They’re sitting there saying that Government should tell us. And, they’re not wrong. But, The Press is there to investigate. And tell. They failed.

Going back to May 2023

(Fox News) “Mr. Biden’s age is not inevitably the decisive issue, but it is a real one, and he will have to address it, forthrightly, whether the choice in 2024 is between him and Mr. Trump or another Republican. The public has a right to know details about his health, physical and mental, and about what he is doing to maintain it. The president also has an obligation to interact with the public, especially with reporters, regularly, and in settings that are not tightly controlled by the White House staff,” the editorial board wrote.

And what did the WP do after? Mostly, the news division ignored the issue, when they weren’t telling us that he was in great shape and totally up for the job. Just like the rest in the Credentialed Media. If Trump was having mental and age issues, you can damned well bet the reporters would be all over it.