“But he hasn’t got anything on”

As we have noted several times, President Biden appears to be in a state of age-related mental decline. The mainstream media are playing the part of the courtiers and townsfolk in “The emperor’s new clothes.” Along comes historian and Spectator deputy editor Dominic Green to play the part of the little child in the Telegraph column “President Biden is crumbling before our eyes.” Here is the top half:

Joe Biden’s decline has become so painful to see and so embarrassing to watch that it feels cruel to mention it. But it’s even more cruel that Biden’s team act as if it’s not happening, and most of America’s media look the other way.

On Thursday night, Biden marked the first anniversary of the Covid-19 shutdowns and his fiftieth day in the White House by giving the first televised address of his presidency. He hadn’t been seen in public for three days.

From the moment he wheezed up to the lectern and peered into the camera, you could tell Biden was on top form: croaky sentiment, sporadic belligerence, and only the occasional moment when he looked oddly distant and perplexed.

He got through twenty minutes, then tottered off without taking any questions. This is how low the bar now is for Biden. And we can see how hard Biden has to fight, and what a long run-up he requires, if he is to clear it.

We can see it in his struggle to follow the simple lines on his autocue, and in his bungling of the simplest ad-libs. We see it in the clips of his increasingly desperate handlers trying to block him from questions at his rare and carefully managed appearances before the cameras. Most of all, we see it in his eyes.

“What am I doing here?” Biden asked after fumbling his autocue lines in an address in Texas in late February. He reached for the cue cards that are now his constant companion. “I’m gonna lose track here.”

Biden’s supporters call him “gaffe-prone[.]” It’s true: he’s always thought with his mouth open. It’s also true that he bravely overcame a speech impediment in childhood, and that anxiety and age can cause a stutter to recur. But these aren’t gaffes or stutters.

Compare how he moves and sounds now to how he was a year ago, let alone five years ago. Biden looks and sounds frail. He seems visibly distressed at his inability to carry out the simplest requirements of office – and at a time when the requirements are simpler than usual.

Green’s column went viral in Britain yesterday. For some reason, however, it seems to be unpublishable in a Telegraph-like newspaper in the good old USA, where Green serves as deputy editor of the Spectator’s American edition.

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