Joe Biden’s presidency is ending, not with a bang, but with a scandal — actually, two scandals.
An old man, shuffling off the political stage — and not too willingly. A bit like Frank Skeffington, the aging hack character played by Spencer Tracy in the 1958 movie The Last Hurrah. Skeffington sums up his dubious life: “One more regret at my age won’t make much difference.” Yet, for all their electoral eagerness, neither Frank nor Joe could overcome the passage of time — and their time passed.
The Last Hurrah poster (LMPC via Getty Images)
So, when the history of the Biden-Harris administration is written, it will be mostly muddled. A term from political science fits well: “disjunction.”
Here at Breitbart News, this author used that “d” word a dozen times to describe the Biden presidency. For instance, on October 9, 2021: “The president is unable to lead the rival groups within his own party, and so a general air of drift, even chaos, sets in.” I added that such disjunction was also the story of Jimmy Carter’s presidency back in the 1970s — “and we know what happened to him.”
Now, we know for sure that the 46th president, like the 39th president, will be a one-termer.
President Jimmy Carter listens to Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE) as they wait to speak at a fundraising reception at Padua Academy in Wilmington, Delaware, on February 20, 1978. (AP Photo/Barry Thumma, File)
Still, some tantalizing, compelling — and even frightening — threads need to be unraveled. As they say, history comes at you two ways: as farce and as tragedy. Let’s look at each in turn.
The Farce
Even a casual TV watcher these past four years could have concluded that Biden — losing his train of thought, staring into space, wandering here and there — didn’t have all his marbles.
Yet, for those same years, loyalists — in the administration and in the media — kept up the pretense: He’s sharp as a tack! He inhales briefing books! He outworks all of us!
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Once again, this facade was easily pierced by someone willing to look with his or her own two eyes. Yet, party discipline was strong enough that, on June 4, when The Wall Street Journal headlined, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,” the reaction of Democrat gatekeepers was ferocious.
But that farrago of outrage didn’t last long. On June 27, Biden’s foggy debate with former President Donald Trump meant the jig was up, right there, live on CNN. Democrats, realizing they couldn’t win in November with Biden, pulled the plug. (And so begins the Kamala Harris Hype, but that’s an ongoing tale for another time.)
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Courtesy of CNN Presidential Debate
Now, after three years of coverup, the details of Biden’s decline and fall come spilling out. The same Journal recalled the president’s dazed-and-confused visit to Capitol Hill on October 1, 2021. The mission was selling House Democrats on the pending infrastructure bill, and, yet, it was a pep talk without pep. “In 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly and failed to make a concrete ask of lawmakers.” The moment was so bad that Biden has never since lobbied Congress.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) was in the audience that day: “It was the first time I remember people pretty jarred by what they had seen.” Phillips would go on to launch a primary challenge against Biden, arguing that the incumbent was too old to win a second term. For his honesty, Phillips was excoriated, shunned, and exiled by fellow Democrats — in 2025, he’ll be a private citizen.
Then-Democrat presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) speaks during a campaign stop on January 18, 2024, in Manchester, New Hampshire. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
So, now comes the farce, as the media “retcon.” That’s a show biz term, short for retroactive continuity, in which storytellers backfill events as if they had been the true storyline all along. The MSM is retconning on Biden, claiming that they had no idea that the man was too old because various family members and aides had hidden the truth from them.
Thus, we have a story that’s one part Edith Wilson, one part the 1993 movie Dave, and one part the more recent HBO show Veep — plus some Obama drama.
Famed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that on July 17, Biden had an undisclosed “medical incident” in Las Vegas. Whereupon the 44th president resolved to push the 46th president out of the race, planning to invoke, if need be, the 25th amendment, which remove an unfit president. And as a little fillip to the story, the defenestrated Biden reportedly wanted to endorse Harris immediately, as a way of staving off a last-minute entry of Michelle Obama. Take that, Barack!
How much of this is true? Who knows! But diggers will keep digging, and in the meantime, it makes for a fabulous farce.
Of course, if Biden ends up pardoning any members of his family — he has said he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, but, then, he has said a lot of things that turned out not to be true — well, that would give us another not-quite-so-farcical storyline: Watergate.
The Tragedy
That Donald Trump survived a bullet coming within a quarter-inch of his skull is a miracle. Yet, the shots fired in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 rate as a tragedy since they took the life of one innocent (and heroic) man, leaving others injured.
How could the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) have been so sloppy? Or was it more, or worse, than sloppiness?
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, after an assassination attempt. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
On July 22, the House of Representatives voted 416-0 to establish a committee to investigate the incident. On July 29, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced the seven Republicans he had chosen for the panel. Simultaneously, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) announced the six Democrats. In a rare joint statement, the two leaders expressed optimism about the work ahead: “We have the utmost confidence in this bipartisan group of steady, highly qualified and capable Members of Congress to move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability and help make certain such failures never happen again.” The committee has set a December 13 deadline for its report. But don’t be surprised if there’s an extension, or a follow-on report.
Still, a formal inquiry is needed, even if it’s unlikely to allay all concerns. In fact, it brings back memories of the Warren Commission; that being the panel formed in 1963 to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The following year, the commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. To this day, many are skeptical of the Warren Commission’s findings. They point to, for example, Oswald’s on-camera claim, “I’m just a patsy.” That Oswald himself was shot and killed shortly thereafter, while in police custody, only adds to the skepticism, even conspiracy-mongering. The accused gunman, now dead, was able to answer no questions: How interesting.
Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963. (Marka/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
On July 23, after a disastrous hearing on Capitol Hill, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned. Since then, disturbing accusations have continued to bubble. For instance, on July 25, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) posted, “Whistleblower tells me local law enforcement partners & suppliers offered drones to Secret Service BEFORE the rally—but Secret Service declined.” If this proves true, we can wonder: Why would the USSS not be interested in drone support?
Then on July 29, The New York Times reported that a local law-enforcement counter-sniper had alerted colleagues about a su, picious individual, presumably Thomas Michael Crooks, prowling around, hours before the bullets blasted out. Several other Butler, PA officers noticed him, too, as he carried a rangefinder, a key tool for long-distance shooting. One officer even photographed him. Yet for some reason, USSS hierarchy took no action. And on the 30th, a whistleblower came forward to say the USSS culture is no lackadaisical that another shooting could happen. Safe bet: Many more revelations and allegations to come.
So what’s true? What’s not true? This crisis will smolder–at least. .
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2024. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)
In the meantime, social media is aflame. On July 26, Joel Berry, managing editor of the satire site Babylon Bee, posted a not-so-funny poll question on X: “Do you think the failed assassination of Trump was just a lone gunman, or did the government try to kill Trump?” Thousands answered, and by a 2:1 majority, “government hit.”
One who answered the question in detail was conservative internet personality Mike Cernovich:
Hybrid warfare. The Secret Service created the circumstances that allowed for an assassin to take his shot. Whether the shooter was MKULTRA or some such is hard to confirm. We can guess. Not know. Without question, the regime wanted SOMEONE to kill Trump, and left a door open.
MKUltra was a once-secret CIA experiment to test whether or not drugs could be used to “brainwash” subjects and thereby control their future behavior. We can add that hypnosis and other kinds of malevolent manipulation have long been topics of popular interest; the 1962 Frank Sinatra movie The Manchurian Candidate, and the 1974 Warren Beatty movie The Parallax View, both contain brainwash-to-assassinate plot elements.
Members of the Warren Commission (Library of Congress)
Could any of that past fiction be some sort of prefiguring truth? We can’t yet know.
But one thing we do know: Trump will be returning to Butler, Pennsylvania. That pilgrimage to a killing field will add epic on top of the tragic.
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