Well, it's official. Two weeks after a disastrous and embarrassing debate, President Joe Biden was able to make it through an hour-long press conference — where he called on a predetermined list of reporters — with just a few screw-ups.
"I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if she's not qualified to be president," Biden said when asked about the qualifications of Vice President Kamala Harris. "I'm the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him [Trump] once, and I will beat him again."
Shortly before the press conference, which started two hours late, Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin" in closing marks at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.
Biden's top advisors and Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, were sitting in the front row and did their best to hide horrified reactions. Unfortunately for them, they were written all over their faces.
But the bar for the President of the United States of America to deliver shouldn’t be on the floor. For Biden, it always is. As Republican Senator Joni Ernst said in response to Biden’s latest gaffes, "Fragility is no way to lead."
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Politically, Biden is facing a barrage of calls from his own party to step aside. Donors have reportedly frozen $90 million in pledges, hoping to squeeze him out. Not for the good of the country or because his mental state is a massive national security risk, but because he might lose to former President Donald Trump. For months, polling has consistently shown Trump ahead in key battleground states. Trump has his base locked up, while Biden is still grappling with how to keep his coalition together, which has been greatly exacerbated in the aftermath of his debate malfunction.
Republicans want Biden, a stubborn, lifelong politician flanked by his corrupt family and ego-driven wife, to stay in the race. They're prepared to take on any candidate should Biden eventually depart, but Biden's the best-case scenario for a weak and unpopular opponent. For the sake of the country, however, it's painfully clear Biden should step aside. If he can't serve another term, he certainly isn't qualified to continue as president.
For years, the White House has covered up Biden's decline, going so far as calling real videos of his stammering, confusion and wandering "cheap fakes" and "misinformation." Biden invoked executive privilege over his audio interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who declined to prosecute Biden due to the severity of his cognitive state.
"At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory," the report states. "Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur's report states, adding Biden couldn't recall basic facts about his personal life and other important matters.
Then on June 27, Biden became the emperor with no clothes in front of the American people and the rest of the world. Since 2021, Biden's weakness and appeasement have invited aggression from America's enemies and war on our friends. It's obvious to anyone willing to accept the truth that Biden is unfit to be commander-in-chief. Not in a second term, but right now. The U.S. is at risk, and our current politics aren't mitigating it.