In this installment of their weekly Sunday Six conversation, PF Whalen and Parker Beauregard of The Blue State Conservative discuss examples of the decline in mental acuity with President Joe Biden.
#6: Every speech he has given in the past 18 months?
Parker: I recently wrote an article that noted many of Biden’s political gaffes are as much a part of his cognitive decline as they are his warped worldview. He is mentally lacking, but the same could be said of his Democrat brethren. They all have a cerebral disease. TDS is often said to have melted peoples’ brains, and it’s true.
Still, that doesn’t take away from Joe Biden’s immense cognitive, cerebral malfunctions. It pains me to even offer up these videos, but sometimes primary sources simply do a better job than recaps. I wouldn’t recommend watching longer than a few minutes, lest you adopt some of his speaking patterns. You will get dumber if you watch too long.
Video 1: A compilation of Candidate Biden’s stuttering and faltering
Video 2: Joe Biden searches for words for 41 looooong seconds.
Video 3: In the words of Townhall.com, Biden suffered his “worst senior moment” when trying to discuss the filibuster.
And who could forget when he misquoted the Declaration of Independence? You know, the thing. Hat tip also to The Federalist that has a running list of major gaffes.
#5 Mixing up Libya with Syria in the lead up to meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
PF: It’s not unusual to mix up names of people and places, but it usually happens when we’re distracted; multi-tasking. It happens to everyone. For me, if I’m cooking dinner, I might yell for one of my kids and mix up their names while doing it. That type of thing happens all the time. But this mix-up with Biden, which occurred two months ago, happened during a press conference at the G8 summit, not while he was broiling some burgers on his patio.
It’s also worth noting the importance of the meeting Biden was about to have at the time of this slip-up, and the significance of the two countries on which he became confused. Libya and Syria are over 1,400 miles apart and on different continents for crying out loud, and their names don’t sound remotely similar.
Libya is important to our national interests if for no other reason than what happened in Benghazi twelve years ago. But Syria is critical right now as a home to the still dangerous ISIS, it’s cozy relationship with Putin, and its strategic location with proximity to Israel, Iraq and Iran. This error wasn’t like a low-level State Department official confusing Slovenia with Slovakia. Our Commander-in-Chief, the so-called Leader of the Free World, slopped up two global hotspots while the whole world was watching. Democrats and their media liked to complain about being embarrassed by President Donald Trump, but Biden is redefining what it means to be embarrassed by someone.
We can also be sure that Putin was licking his chops after seeing this performance. We need strong, assertive leaders in these situations, our national security depends on it. Instead, we have a senile knucklehead who couldn’t find Syria on a map even if the names were shown… in large font.
#4: Dozens of Democrats sought to revoke Biden’s singular ability to launch nuclear weapons.
Parker: In February, news was making the rounds that legislators – within his own party, nonetheless – were seeking to amend duties historically assigned to the Commander-in-Chief alone. They did not want him owning the launch authorizations of the United States’ immense nuclear arsenal.
Nothing that happens in politics is ever a coincidence, so it would be naive to think that this move was predicated solely on Biden’s mental decline. There is the fact that within the Biden administration there is a power vacuum, filled by Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarret, and other remnants of Obama’s eight years in office, if the rumors are to be believed. There is also the fact that politicians love, seek, and consolidate power; it is their raison d’etre, their modus operandi. Any opportunity to grab more executive functions is a wet dream for slimy D.C. operatives.
Of course, though, there is the fact that Biden has simply been wrong about every foreign policy decision of the past forty decades. To put that in perspective, Joe Biden has been making egregious foreign policy decisions for longer than the average American has been alive. The mean age of Americans is in the upper thirties while Biden is pushing fifty years in federal office. Yikes.
No matter how much the Deep State despised Trump, I don’t recall efforts by elected Democrats or unelected (and Democrat) bureaucrats making a push to limit what Trump could do with our military prowess. At the end of the day, this decision has to be seen as a response to Biden’s cluelessness. Look what he did in Afghanistan – can you imagine him deciding to go Broken Arrow with our nukes?
#3: Confusing Michigan’s Governor Whitmer with his own Secretary of Energy.
PF: Again, depending on the setting and the individuals involved, I don’t fault anyone for occasionally mixing up people’s names. For instance, if Biden is getting on Air Force One and being debriefed as he walks with a member of his staff and he forgets the name of one his Secret Service agents, that’s an understandable mistake. But Biden has these ‘senior moments’ all the time, and they don’t just happen in private. He loses his train of thought while making public statements, usually with a teleprompter telling him what to say. He often has moments where he jumbles words, to the point we can only make assumptions on what the heck his trying to say. And then we have moments like this one, where Biden confuses Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of Michigan which is one of the most critical swing states in American politics, and Jennifer Granholm, a member of his own Cabinet.
Do the names Jennifer Granholm and Gretchen Whitmer sound similar? I don’t think so. Do the two women have similar job responsibilities? Not even close. Yet Biden stumbled and fumbled his way through this virtual event two weeks ago, and he doesn’t even seem to realize as he’s making the mistake.
It should also be pointed out that, for most of us, another contributing factor to mixing up names and places – in addition to being distracted as I mentioned earlier – is when we talk fast. Perhaps we have several thoughts we’re trying to convey and we start speeding up our speech as a result. We get ahead of ourselves and we misstate names. It happens. But that’s not what’s going on with Biden. Not only doesn’t he talk fast, he actually talks pretty slowly.
Joe Biden will be 79 years old in November. But the problem is he was never all that sharp to begin with. Now that his mental abilities are clearly falling, his dull-wittedness is becoming a serious concern.
#2: Confusing his own family members with one another or different people.
Parker: Yes, Joe Biden is demented. Yes, his dementia plays a role in how he handles his role. That being said, I have written before that I do not think his dementia is the sole reason for his disastrous policies. More than brain matter decomposition, what really drives his actions are the toxic notions of leftism. Leftism is a mental illness which is even more destructive than Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. While we spend time focusing on dementia, it is not in the least reassuring to know that Kamala Harris is next in line.
Of course, his dementia is real and that’s the focus of our article. Nothing more painfully presents this case than the failures of Biden to name and identify his own family members. There are likely more examples, but here are four from the past year while on the campaign trail or while in office:
First, there was the case of mistakenly calling his doctor wife his sister. Huh? He’s been with this vain babysitter since before his first wife died. Surely he should recognize her were it not for increasing gray matter.
Second, there was the problem of confusing one grandaughter with another. Is this Natalie? Finnegan? Are you Beau’s daughter? Hunter’s? What a trainwreck.
Third, in a case that did not get nearly enough attention, the senile Biden asked for his long-deceased mom while, fittingly, hosting an event highlghting the American with Disabilities Act.
Fourth, Joe Biden couldn’t remember what branch of service or rank his son, Beau, held while in the service. Was he a Navy captain or an Army major? Seems like the civilian leader of the armed forces should know the basic difference.
#1: Telling George Stephanopoulos that he can’t “recall” being warned against Afghan withdrawal.
PF: Anyone who regularly interacts with people has dozens, perhaps even hundreds of conversations each day. For the President of the United States, I’m sure that number is even higher. It’s not an easy job, and there’s a lot going on for whomever holds that position. Therefore, being unable to remember certain aspects of various conversations can be forgiven in many circumstances; but not in this one. No way.
Biden was pressed by Stephanopoulos during their recent interview about the idea that Biden had not been warned by his team of the dangers of withdrawing from Afghanistan and the likelihood of that government’s collapse. “No one said that to me that I can recall,” said Biden. Not that you can recall? This was the single-most important decision of his presidency. It was critical. And he can’t remember being told it was a problematic decision?
A lot of people have simply deduced that Biden was just lying, which is an understandable conclusion. Saying “I can’t recall” is the easy way out for politicians, and they frequently cite the aforementioned abundance of information they receive as justification. But I disagree. I think there’s a good chance Biden was telling the truth. And let’s face it, either path Biden wanted to take on the matter – either “I don’t remember being told,” or “Yes, I was told but I blew them off” – looks bad. One answer screams senility, the other incompetence.
Biden totally blew it with Afghanistan, and the carnage from Thursday’s blasts in Kabul is just the beginning of the fallout from his disastrous handling of the affair. And the idea that he doesn’t remember being warned not to pull the trigger is utterly scary. But Joe Biden is only about 15% of the way through his four-year term. He’s still got a long way to go, and his mental faculties aren’t going to get better. If Biden screwed the pooch this badly because he can’t “recall,” what other disasters await us over the next 3+ years?
This article originally appeared on Blue State Conservative
CLICK HERE TO SHOP ON THE CONSERVATIVE ALTERNATIVE TO AMAZON!
