The U.S. has gone from “All the President’s Men” to all the president’s mental lapses.
Carl Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter who wrote his way into history covering the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration a half-century ago, put a nail in the coffin of another White House cover-up on Monday, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper that efforts to explain away President Joe Biden’s dismal performance at Thursday night’s debate are a smoke screen to hide longstanding problems.
White House sources have told him, Bernstein said on “Anderson Cooper 360,” that Biden’s obvious struggles during the debate debacle were nothing new to those on the inside.
“And they are adamant that what we saw the other night, the Joe Biden we saw is not an — a one-off, that there have been 15, 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed,” Bernstein said.
“And what’s so significant is the people that this is coming from and also how many people around the president are aware of such incidents, including some reporters incidentally, who have witnessed some of them.
“But here we see tonight, as these people say President Biden is at his absolute best, and yet these people who have supported him, loved him, campaigned for him, see him often say that in the last six months particularly there has been a marked incidence of cognitive decline and physical infirmity.”
Bernstein was speaking after Biden’s comments on Monday’s Supreme Court victory for former President Donald Trump’s case claiming immunity from criminal liability for actions he took in his official capacity as president.
Biden spoke from a teleprompter for five minutes, as The Daily Caller reported. He took no questions from reporters.
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Bernstein told Cooper: “I think that what these folks are saying and have been saying for a while is, ‘Yes, he’s great when we see him as we have tonight, but he also has these inexplicable moments that we are very concerned about.’”
Check out the interview here (a transcript is available here):
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For astute Americans who’ve followed the news of the past four years, about the only thing shocking about this is the fact that White House sources are finally coming clean.
Biden’s record of mental slips is voluminous. From forgetting the Declaration of Independence (“you know, the thing!“) or calling out the name of a congresswoman who’d been dead for months (“Where’s Jackie?“) to Thursday night’s 90-minute-long national nightmare of elder abuse, it’s been clear since even before the 2020 election that the now-81-year-old career politician is ready for rocker and a blanket in a particularly quiet retirement home.
In early June, remember, The Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster report quoting Democrats and Republicans detailing Biden’s struggles behind the scenes.
Democrats, meanwhile have spent years trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes, most recently trying to disparage the video evidence of Biden’s failings as “cheap fakes,” created by Republicans who are somehow controlling the space-time continuum to disparage the president.
But after Thursday’s debate — a debate Team Biden called for and set the rules for, in the undeniably friendly confines of CNN’s Atlanta headquarters — that bloom is well off the rose.
Bernstein’s report to Cooper simply nails it down.
For many, though, the question is why now? And the answer could well be because Democrats know that the Joe Biden who appeared before the country on Thursday is not a man Americans are likely to trust in the White House for four more debilitating years.
“The knives are definitely out,” conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk wrote in a social media post with Bernstein’s interview.
Uh oh, Joe! Carl Bernstein on CNN says the “horror show” we saw during the debate has happened 15-20 other times in the last year and a half according to close aides and people “who love Joe.” The knives are definitely out. pic.twitter.com/yIiiqWIKZu
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 2, 2024
Many agreed.
MSM is scared Biden will lose and they want to push him out.
— Cash Loren (@CashLorenShow) July 2, 2024
Carl Bernstein is always rolled out when the administrative state wants to take out a president. He’s doing it here, he tried it with Trump, he did it to Nixon.
— Jason Hambrecht (@HambrechtJason) July 2, 2024
They want him out.
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) July 2, 2024
After Bernstein and fellow Post reporter Bob Woodward recounted their work in the book “All the Presiden’s Men” — that turned into Hollywood glory in the 1976 movie of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman (as Bernstein) and Robert Redford — they followed up with an account about the period leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
That one was called “The Final Days.”
When it comes to President Joe Biden, that could well describe the period between now and the Nov. 5 election — and then Jan. 20, 2025.
