Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday afternoon. Everyone saw his post on X. In a follow-up message on X, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential nomination, and Democrat leaders began lining up (with the notable exception of Barack Obama) to endorse her. The controversy over Biden’s dementia and ability to perform the duties of president appears to be over, although the nagging and quite large issue remains of whether he is able to perform the duties of president for the next seven months. And yet almost immediately, questions about the way Biden withdrew began to swirl, including the basic one: did he really withdraw at all?
The rumors began with the form of Biden’s withdrawal from the race. On Sunday at 1:46 p.m. EDT, the Joe Biden X account published an image of a letter in which Joe states that “it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” It was a splendid 21st-century moment that Biden announced his own political demise on a social media platform, but it also raised questions, chief of which was: “Where’s Joe?”
There are rough precedents for what Biden did on Sunday afternoon. When President Lyndon Johnson saw the writing on the wall and decided not to seek reelection in 1968, he did so in a nationally televised address. When President Richard Nixon resigned the office in 1974, he also did so on camera. But the public has not seen Biden since he was announced as having come down with COVID last Wednesday and retired to his taxpayer-funded walled Delaware beach house.
Shouldn’t Biden have made such a momentous announcement before the cameras? If he is too ill to do so, couldn’t we at the very least have some still photos that make it clear that this is a decision he has actually made? After all, he was insisting right up until quite recently that he was planning to stay in the race and win. There is an uneasy banana-republic feel to this whole thing. A president whose own base has turned against him comes down with a disease that many have noted has all the strength of the common cold at this point. Nevertheless, he treats it as if he had gotten the bubonic plague and immediately goes out of sight. Several days later comes the announcement, ostensibly under his name, that he is bowing out.
Add to the mix the fact that this unwanted president is suffering from dementia. Many have made the joke since Sunday afternoon: When Joe wakes up from his nap and hears about this, he sure is gonna be mad… It’s funny, but it also has a sharp edge. Does Biden even know that this is happening? Is he so far gone at this point that he has to be kept under wraps while others, presumably the people who have been running this administration from the beginning, make decisions in his name? That wouldn’t be too different from how things have been going, but up until now, Biden has, however ineptly, been performing his duties as the front man. Now, for his most important announcement of this election campaign, he is nowhere in sight and all we get is a letter on X?
Related: Resign Already, Joe
And then there is that letter. It’s on the stationery of “Joseph R. Biden, Jr.,” not of The White House. Maybe that has a simple enough explanation: this is a campaign matter, not a presidential matter, and so Biden, ever scrupulous to obey the rules (ha!), inserted the proper paper into his printer. Others, however, have pointed out that the signature on the letter diverges in several ways from how Biden has signed his name in the past.
Now, all that could be venturing too deeply into tinfoil-hat territory. This administration, however, with its constant lying and spinning, along with its craven efforts to compel social media giants to silence dissidents, has invited that kind of speculation.
Biden and the Democrats need to come clean. Above all, as unpleasant an experience as it is, we need to see the man and hear him say that he has left the race. Otherwise, the questions that have been circulating for years become all the more insistent: can Biden really serve until Jan. 20? Who exactly is acting as president now? If we don’t get answers, America has just taken another step toward becoming a third-world banana republic, where opposition leaders are convicted of bogus crimes and shot at, and unwanted leaders are disposed of out of sight, with flimsy excuses — and if you know what’s good for you, you better not ask questions.
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