President Joe Biden landed in Paris, France on Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s ceremonies to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day and immediately did what we all, unfortunately, expect him to do these days: He called a lid.
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It’s a long flight, for sure, but unlike the rest of us Biden doesn’t have to deal with flight delays, getting through the TSA line, or being stuck in the middle seat between a hypochondriac wearing an N95 mask and a person of unidentifiable gender who really should have purchased two seats. He also has sleeping quarters with a real bed, so he shouldn’t need a nap after landing like we all would.
The most likely reason for the lid, we all know, is that Biden (or his team) didn’t want to have to answer press questions on three big topics: Hunter’s trial, his executive action on the border, and the Wall Street Journal report published overnight headlined, “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping .” That WSJ report contains details of several extremely concerning episodes in which Biden’s grasp on the here-and-now was tenuous at best, according to those in the room:
When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.
In a February one-on-one chat in the Oval Office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the president said a recent policy change by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects was just a study, according to six people told at the time about what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.
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The White House is already dismissing the report as partisan but, as our Nick Arama wrote:
The WSJ noted that the reports came from 45 people, including Republicans and Democrats, whom they spoke to over several months and that some of the Democrats also said he ‘showed his age in several of the exchanges.’
With any luck, Team Biden will spend Wednesday ensuring that they can get just the right pharmaceutical cocktail, timed just right, so POTUS won’t embarrass the country at Thursday’s ceremonies.