Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~Now that Kamala is unburdened by that has-been and before whoever's holding Joe Biden releases another not-quite-proof-of-life audio recording, let's go back less than a month to when this started - the June 27th debate and the formerly loyal press corps' amazing synchronised-shivving routine. As I wrote back then about the sudden outbreak of "third-rate dinner theatre":
So why weren't they able, after a week-and-a-half of dosage experimentation, to shoot the stiff enough of the juice to pass him off as being back in his State of the Union top-of-the-game mode?
As my former GB News colleague Neil Oliver observed long ago on The Mark Steyn Show, formulating a useful rule of contemporary politics:
This is happening because they want it to happen.
Just so. Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward wonders:
Was Biden set up? For more than a year, quite a lot of observers have confidently predicted that Biden would not be the nominee, and that the Democratic establishment would swap him out at an opportune moment...
But the scheme needed a catalyst to work. That catalyst was obviously the June 27 debate. It was the earliest presidential debate ever, before either candidate was formally nominated... If that debate hadn't happened until late September, as is typical, it would have been too late.
True. And throughout that debate every Deputy Assistant Under-Staffer of Media Liaison was texting and/or DM-ing his most biddable press hack:
WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: So how d'you think it's going?
WORTHLESS HACK: Oh, I think His Majesty's new suit is pretty sharp...
WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Really? You didn't notice that the Emperor has no clothes?
WORTHLESS HACK: Well, yeah, but don't worry, I'm not going to be saying that...
WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Actually, we'd like you to...
WORTHLESS HACK: Are you sure? You mean one of those tentative 'Granted he may have lost a step since he first debated Robert C Byrd on Saturday Night Klanbake in 1943'-type pieces..?
WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Nah, just go full train-wreck. I can give you Macron and Meloni's direct lines if you need some deep background...
As Mr Hayward notices:
The harsh reaction to Biden's performance within seconds of the debate ending seems strikingly immediate, as though it was prepared and organized in advance.
You don't say! Yours truly again, on June 28th:
It's important to bear in mind that there is no rational justification for this sudden 'panic'. The squinting croaking zombie has been out of it for almost his entire 'presidency'...
"Oh, My God! The President Is Brain-Dead!" would have been a news story in February 2021. When it becomes one only three-and-a-half years later, it's not a real news story but, per Neil Oliver, something that is happening because "they want it to happen".
So what do "they" do? To demonstrate that Biden's in tip-top shape, a guy who takes over a week to prep for one fiasco is told he has to do ten fiascoes a day. Steve Hayward again:
Add to this the Democratic chorus after the debate that he had to "get out there," do interviews, press conferences, and more campaign appearances, which, after three years of careful coddling, they must have known he was incapable of doing, because he "misspoke" at every single one.
Yeah, and not just his regular misspeaking, failing to distinguish the Secretary of the Interior from his sister-in-law. No, staggering punchily from one disaster to the next, Joe took it to the next level, breezily mixing up the few players non-political types have actually heard of:
President Putin meets Vice President Trump. pic.twitter.com/ZIMylo45ae
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) July 12, 2024
Neil Oliver again: This is happening because they want it to happen. So, after a couple of weeks of the National Misspeaking Tour, culminating in strange reports of a "medical emergency" in Las Vegas, Biden "tested" positive for Covid and got yanked from public view. What happens in Vegas stays in Rehoboth Beach, under wraps.
Covid, huh? For some strange reason, the Our World In Data hub has July 2024 Covid numbers for every country on earth except the United States. So we'll have to make do with adjoining jurisdictions: in Canada, the July 7th stats show a supposed Covid case rate of 8.06 people per million; in Mexico, 3.32 people per million.
Oh, wait: here's a lonely pinprick of US sovereign territory that managed to get its July numbers in. Puerto Rico: a Covid case rate of zero people per million.
And yet one of those 8.06/3.32/zero people is the most cosseted and insulated and medically monitored person on the face of the earth? What are the odds of that?
No matter. He's immediately off the campaign trail in order to "self-isolate".
In the White House? In case he has to appoint an ambassador to Chad or something?
No. In his beach house in Delaware. For any Kremlinologists reading this, that's the Yank equivalent of Gorbachev's Crimean dacha. Once holed up in his Delaware dacha, Joe uttered not a word, leaving it to his "physician" to assure us that the patient was performing all his presidential duties ...and to whichever non-binary intern does the weekend social-media shift to tweet out Joe's withdrawal as nominee, plus an endorsement of Kamala ...oh, and one more:
Can you hold up today's newspaper for us?
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 22, 2024
No first-term incumbent in American history has ever thrown in the towel this close to the election, and none has done so via a ghost-written tweet, or fax or telegram or Pony Express message while hidden from public view. The purported President of the United States has metamorphosed into one of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns". Do the authors of "his" tweets run them past him? Does he know he's out of the race? Is he even - by the minimal standards of the last four years - still alive?
Well, "Biden" called in by telephone to a Kamala event yesterday. Just to keep the conspiracists hopping, the Acting President did some rather good acting and started to say Joe was "still on the recording" before correcting herself to "on the call". The audio was more coherent than any Biden appearance from this month's National Misspeaking Tour, leading to rumours that it was a heavily edited cassette from Joe's first Senate race in 1972 or that the AI is not yet sophisticated enough to do a good enough simulation of how bad he is.
One recalls a decade ago the then Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, arguing that 9/11 was staged on the grounds that he'd just seen Avatar and, if the Americans can make that, they can make anything. So, if the live call-in to Kamala was unconvincing, it must be because they want it to be, right?
At which point Frank Biden, who like Hunter appears nude all over the Internet, took a break from his hectic schedule of naked selfies to say that he and Joe will "enjoy whatever time we have left".
Er, wait - so the guy who was "the best Biden ever" ten minutes ago is about to be carried out by the handles? These fellows don't mess around, do they? A strange aside in a Wall Street Journal piece:
Someone with the power to offer absolution has allegedly been sighted in the vicinity of Rehoboth Beach.
Whoever did this has gone Hans Christian Andersen one better: the clothes have no emperor. Which, when you think about it, may be far more advantageous to the powers behind the throne.
Meanwhile, President-Designate Harris is already speaking from the White House, and Biden HQ has taken on the character of the man himself - the lights are out and nobody's home:
Sure did pic.twitter.com/9elNfzRH5T
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2024
Like I said four weeks ago: "third-rate dinner theatre". But who scripted it? And who choreographed it so dazzlingly? And which impresario rehearsed all the players so that only Joe Biden bumped into every single bit of set furniture? One after the other, after three-and-a-half years of artful stage-managed concealment...
And we haven't even mentioned the far darker drama the Deep State arranged for the chap on the other team: The United States Secret Service spends all afternoon watching a sniper setting up on a rooftop with a clear line of fire ...but lets Trump take the stage anyway. And then the service's director airily tells Congress that oh, no, we didn't keep the recordings of the operation's radio communications...
I didn't believe until right now that a specific stand down order was given by the Secret Service to leave the assassin alone. But now that we know Cheatle refused to record or archive the comms (or potentially even deleted them), I don't think there's any other conclusion to... https://t.co/XMoQNgxLTt
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 22, 2024
Is anything real in American politics? Or is it bollocks all the way down now? I believe it was the late Christopher Hitchens who said that politics is showbusiness for ugly people. The people are getting uglier, and so is the show. The next four months will be nuttier, and far likely bloodier. Me four weeks ago:
The guys running this soap opera know the ending they're working up to, and any unexpected plot twists en route are designed to serve that end.
~Steyn will return this evening with the latest chapter of our current Tale for Our Time, Bulldog Drummond.
