Please don't give interviews. Don't promote your book.
Don't try to make yourself, or Joe, or Hunter Biden look good by explaining further.
Just go away.
Jill Biden wrote a book, View from the East Wing: A Memoir. She is giving interviews promoting the book. She gave an interview to CBS News and said that while watching the disastrous debate she knew that something seriously wrong was happening in front of her eyes.
I was frightened. . . . I don’t know what happened. I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.
The Atlantic has an excerpt from her memoir, where she give another account of her thinking in the moment:
Is he short-circuiting? Is this a stroke? I felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?
In light of this version of events, then, incredibly enough, I agree with something President Trump wrote yesterday in a typical-for-Trump petty and insulting Truth Social post. Trump wrote:
She said that she thought he was having a “stroke,” and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do.
I agree. Trump is always low character -- selfish, dishonest, mean-spirited -- but he is not always incorrect. Aside from her recognition of her husband's duty to the country, and hers as likely the one person in the world who was in a position to pull Joe Biden "out of the game" acting as his trusted intimate partner, she had a personal duty to her husband, to get him off stage and get him to a hospital. She needed to intervene to save his life, and if nothing else, to save him from the embarrassment and damage to his reputation to be on camera, the world watching, as he was having a stroke or mental breakdown. She could have strode onto stage, said that Joe had the flu and was taking strong medication, and gotten him out of there.
Her behavior after the debate was no better. She told supporters and the media:
Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question, you knew all the facts.
How ridiculous. We saw what we saw.
Thus began critical weeks of lying, dithering, and delay that sabotaged the Biden family reputation and the democratic process as she insisted that Joe was just fine, really he is, he's ready for four more years. She led a crowd of supporters chanting "Four more years."
Trump is spectacularly dishonest. Democrats are right to point it out and right to call Trump's assertions, still today as adamant as ever, that he won the 2020 election the "Big Lie." My wish is that America have at least two strong, respected parties that act as institutions that provide ladders for leadership of our democracy. I have concluded that the GOP has been corrupted by Trump, and it will stay corrupted until he either dies or is brought down by the results of bad policies. The fact that Republican officeholders ignore his spectacular grift, lawlessness, and glory-seeking shows me that they have lost all self-respect. They are toadies. Enablers. They are in a cult, or too afraid of it to act in defiance of it.
But Democrats have a big lie of their own to own up for: Democrats hid Biden. Until the institutional party admits the lie, a critical mass of people of low engagement and partisanship will conclude that "they are all corrupt" and that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. Close observers will notice a distinction in scale. Democrats think small; Hunter Biden peddled influence to collect grift in increments of tens of thousands. The Trump family collects billions, maybe tens of billions. Democrats are hypocrites about it; Trump does it openly and proudly. But it is a distinction in size, not kind. Both Democrats and Republicans trade stocks on inside information. The swamp is bigger than ever.
The people around Biden -- Democrats -- covered up a matter of monumental significance to the country, that our president was failing mentally and he was campaigning for another four year term.
I write this as a person who typically votes for Democrats, donates money to Democrats, and who wants that party to be worthy of the vote that entrusts Democrats with public office. Democrats have work to do, and they have an opportunity to do it. Republicans cannot "push reset" on Trump. He is still there. But Democrats can push reset. It begins by not continuing the Democratic lie. Call out dishonesty. Condemn wrongdoing. Federal and state candidates should say it flat out and clearly: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and the people who cosseted him made a colossal mistake. It was not just a mistake of strategy and tactics. It was one of morality: They lied to the American people and that is wrong.
A Democrat can emerge with a strong reform vibe by discarding people and policies that are indefensible and unpopular. I do not want Jill Biden to fill the public square with talk of minimization and justification. I want a different message to be bouncing around the public conversation, a message of disapproval from Democrats willing to be straight with the American people. Say it clearly enough that the public gets it. Say that hiding the truth about Joe Biden was shameful.
Out with the old.
That sets the stage for new people and new policies that re-establish trust and win elections.
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5 comments:
Not only did Jill Biden make those ridiculous post-debate claims, as noted, but they then proceeded to a Waffle House and a rally. Genuine health-scare decision-making, eh?
Jill Biden simply enjoyed the spotlight and the prestige, the fawning magazine pictorials, so much so that she was willing with a complicit media to push dangerous lies.
Dangerous, indeed. Look where we are. This gratuitous book is likely Jill Biden’s last major public vanity project. Was it worth it, Dr.? One term as Joe’d said, he’d be a hero.
People make decisions based on Trust, which polls tell us is at a very low point for almost all institutions these days. Covey’s “Speed of Trust” writing breaks trust into 4 pillars: Intent, Integrity, Capability and Outcome (ie trust that someone will deliver results).
This post makes me think that the public has given up on the first three- for both parties, and now people vote on who they think will deliver what they want. Trump is clearly not delivering on his promises (we are not winning bigly). It seems like a plurality of Americans still want what Trump promised even if they hold their noses on his methods.
It’s sounds like you’re saying if the Dems can offer a more morally credible and competent candidate who will promise what people actually want, then there’s a chance for a kind of ‘regime change’. But so far the Dems haven’t offered an appealing alternative message or candidate
I couldn't agree anymore with the sentiment of today's post. The Biden white house, the DNC, the organized Democrat party in general fucked up incredibly badly, and as a result Trump is getting to inflict irrecoverable damage on our country and the world. I'm still super pissed about it. Ken Martin's "autopsy" that he released last week is right in the same vein. An absolute fucking joke.
That’s right. Jill Biden “never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do.” As Melania did, for instance, when Trump was shot in the ear (allegedly)...oh wait – she wasn’t even there, as any good wife would be. Anyway, I’m glad Biden called her book “View from the East Wing.” It reminds us there was one, until Trump came along.
PS: Both times Trump was elected, he was running against a woman far more qualified than he is – one of them a woman of color. The reasons for a crook like Trump being in our nation’s highest office go way beyond Biden.
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