Democrats’ hubris gave us Trump
by Kevin Ellis
I’m furious with Joe Biden, his staff, his wife, and family and the Democratic Party leadership. There is also Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi and all the Democrats who defended Biden’s ability to be president when they knew better.
Note: I am so sorry that Biden has prostate cancer. This is a guy who has suffered immensely during his long political career. It’s easy to forget the early years. After being drummed out of the presidential race in 1987 for plagiarizing a speech, Biden suffered two brain aneurysms. A priest read him the last rites. He was inches from dying.
A car accident killed his wife and daughter when he was first elected. His sons Beau and Hunter were seriously injured but survived. He was 29 years old and thought of resigning his Senate seat. But the lure of the Senate and its trappings changed his mind.
More tragedy followed: His older son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. His son, Hunter, struggled with drug addiction, profited from his father’s name, had an affair with his brother’s widow, introduced her to cocaine, and was convicted of felony gun charges. Few politicians have faced such overwhelming adversity and trauma.
His comeback to the presidency in 2020 was a political miracle that is often overlooked.
So now there is prostate cancer, which comes for most men. It’s sad and he deserves compassion for what he has endured. A loving wife and his immediate family and staff were there with him throughout all of it. They protected him by building a shield so he could stay in politics and seek the presidency over and over.
To review – Joe Biden wins the 2020 election over Trump. But it’s clear halfway through his term that he cannot do certain things. He cannot speak off the cuff and increasingly needs a teleprompter. His aides are visibly nervous when he speaks to small groups. He doesn’t recognize people he has known for decades. His staff is limiting his work to the hours between 10 am and 4pm.
Then he makes the fatal error and decides to run for re-election. Through a combination of ego and hubris, he actually believes that he can win again. He actually believes that he is the guy. And then, in June 2023, he arrives for the debate with Trump and lights himself on fire. He cannot answer basic questions. He’s clearly an addled old man.
“We finally beat Medicare,’’ he stammers after a long, halting effort. At that moment, my wife got up from the couch and said, “I cannot watch this anymore.’’
Debate moderator Dana Bash writes a note to her producers: “He just lost the election.’’
It was now in front of us, all of us. And yet everyone from the Democratic party to Bernie Sanders and AOC said after the debate that Biden can win. Only Vermont Senator Peter Welch, in the Washington Post in July, calls for Biden to get out.
Who is to blame?
I blame Biden and his inner circle.
His staff propped him up so he could appear functional. And at various points along the way, anyone could have stepped in, including his wife, who could have said: “Enough!’’ At some level, this is the job of a spouse. We all do stupid things. And if we’re lucky, a spouse steps in and says: “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You can’t do this!’’
The Biden coverup is now the talk of Washington. Two new books lay out what happened. Jake Tapper and his co-author Alex Thompson are getting lots of attention for their book “Original Sin.’’
And I interviewed Amie Parness of The Hill, who co-authored – “Fight – Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House – for my podcast.
While Tapper’s celebrity status gets him on all the TV shows and podcasts, Parnes describes a lesser known incident: Biden giving a family a tour of the White House, leading them to the old swimming pool and into the locker room, as Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy follows along wondering if Biden is all there.
Tapper recounts a key exchange with world famous actor George Clooney, who deep-sixed Biden with an op-ed piece in the NY Times. Clooney hosted a fundraiser for Biden in June before the election against Trump and Biden didn’t recognize him.
The signs were all there. Special Counsel Robert Hur, investigating Biden’s handling of classified comments, wrote that Biden was an elderly man with a poor memory. That was diplomatic.
I publicly opposed Biden’s re-election, both in writing and on the radio. Those who opposed Biden’s re-election were called disloyal. All the while, the White House staff clearly pursued a concerted campaign to protect Biden from the eyes of the American people, not to mention the press.
We all are complicit here. We allowed Biden to think he could run for re-election. We have disengaged as citizens. We have forgotten what the Bill of Rights is, what the role of the president is. We have fallen prey to the Internet and social media and allowed our politicians to become performance artists – some terrible, some OK. Congress has given away its authority.
Both parties are responsible. The press still hasn’t figured out why Trump went to Walter Reed Medical Center in 2019. Trump withholds ANY legitimate medical information about his health.
Presidents lie. White House officials lie. But the lies about Biden are bigger. And the gaslighting of the press and the public by the Biden loyalists about his decline needs to be called out. We have not moved on. This is history and it needs to be told.
And even with cancer, the lying continues. It turns out Biden had not taken a prostate cancer test while he was president or for the previous eight years he was vice president. Imagine that.
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a political insider who knows all these folks, said recently that Biden most probably had prostate cancer while president.
And behind the scenes, the Biden people were threatening that if Biden dropped out, we would get Kamala Harris.
The behind-the-scenes trashing of Harris by the Biden team drove David Plouffe crazy. Remember that Plouffe was Obama’s campaign manager. After the terrible June debate when Biden eventually gets out of the race, the voters are handed Kamala Harris, whom the Biden people had submarined for four years.
Mike Donilon, Steve Richetti, Bruce Reed, Ron Klain, Hunter Biden, Jill Biden, Anthony Bernal, Anita Dunn, Annie Tomasini. These are the Biden people who built the shield around Biden and who handed us Trump. They were lying to themselves. They were lying to others. They lied to us.
Why did Democrats participate in the cover-up? Why didn’t someone say something? Well – they did actually. NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd said it. So did Alex Thompson of Politico. Congressman Dean Phillips said it. Robert Hur said it. And so did I.
Democrats ignored the polls, ignored what they were seeing with their own eyes and emasculated themselves to the power of an incumbent president and his family.
In the end, it’s Biden’s fault. It’s sad and tragic. But it has saddled us with Trump and his hatred for a four-year term that is changing our civic society for a generation. It has turned off young voters for a generation. It handed the campaign to Kamala Harris, a mediocre candidate who could not express how she would govern and could not figure out a way to go on the biggest podcast in the world to talk to millions of voters.
What should have happened? His closest friends should have stepped up and told him the game was over. They should have resigned or threatened to resign. They should have gone on TV and told the truth.
Instead, we had a president who could not speak unscripted to 40 people in a private room without a teleprompter, who could not speak to the press, who was freezing up in public. He was senile and unable to function. And those around him knew it.
And we are living with the consequences of that disastrous decision.