Jennifer Rubin has been a favorite of mine for a while now. In her latest video she said that Politico suggested that NY Times pushed President Biden’s age because President Biden was not giving them an interview. When I searched online for this article by Politico that Jen referred to, at first I only found a hit piece trying to push a discredited right wing talking point. Some Jack Shafer tried to advance the President Biden isn’t able to fulfill his duties meme in a February post. Then, I found what Jen was referring to. This is far more concerning that simply mistakenly incessantly pushing overwhelming concerns about the age of President Biden. The New York Times Bumiller believes, “You can be a force for democracy, liberal democracy. You don’t have to be a force for the Biden White House ”. And Politico says, “Biden aides largely view the election as an existential choice for the country.” It’s impossible, to my mind, to come to any other conclusion then that they, at a minimum, believe that this is a debatable proposition. To the contrary, this is a binary choice and the only person other than Joe Biden who can win the 2024 presidential election already attempted a coup, incited an insurrection, has been indicted by four different grand juries and is charged with 88 felonies, is arguing for absolute immunity for presidents in front of the Supreme Court, is an out bigot, a person found liable for sexual assault of E Jean Carroll by a jury, has had his university revealed to be a fraud, found to have run a charity fraudulently to the extent that he is not allowed to run a charity in New York again, and engaged in such corrupt business practices that he was found liable for including fees $454 million and is now ineligible to run a business in New York, and is now in front of a jury charged with 34 felonies, has pledged to use his power in government and the DOJ to get revenge and retribution upon his personal enemies if he wins, lied and minimized and intentionally mismanaged COVID in a way that resulted in an additional 400,000 deaths, and is using Hitlerian language.
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How the hell is this presidential election not an existential choice for the country and how can you treat this as a normal election and as if each candidate for the office of president is equally meritorious?
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The part regarding the New York Times starts around the beginning of the ninth minute.
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This is why I found from my first google search
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Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer. He has written commentary about the media industry and politics for decades and was previously a columnist for Reuters and Slate.
That President Joe Biden now presents as “an elderly man with a poor memory,” as special counsel Robert Hur put it in his recent report, is something quite obvious to anyone watching the president on those rare occasions when White House handlers unleash him from his script. That Biden’s gears no longer perfectly mesh would seem to matter, given his campaign for another four years in office. The findings, from Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents, would also seem to be newsworthy.
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Jack Shafer looks either absolutely stupid or like a political hack who doesn’t like President Biden for whatever reason. Robert Hur’s statement is completely refuted by the transcript based upon what I have read which only is up to page 90 of the first interview which is 156 pages. The second interview is 99 pages. I am essentially one third of the way through the two interviews. President Biden’s memory is within normal ranges. He occasionally will make a mistake while he speaks. Some portion of them will be due to his struggle with his stutter. At worst, he might have trivial issues with his memory. Robert Hur himself gave grace to others acknowledging that witnesses may not recall years old events with clarity. He also admitted, “There are entirely innocent explanations which we cannot refute.” If you can’t indict and get a conviction without a confession on the part of the person you want to prosecute, then you don’t have a case. Jack Smith didn’t complain about Donald Trump’s lack of participation in interrogations, but indictments he sought were given a true bill by his two different grand juries. He built his cases upon evidence. He didn’t simply depend upon the defendant confessing.
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We already watched the State of the Union and President Biden did well, including in parts that were performed extemporaneously in interactions with republicans. C-Span also helpfully allowed us to hear his very normal conversations with democrats in Congress. He has given at least a dozen campaign speeches recently. He had a long conversation with Prime Minister Bibi telling him that he had to present a plan to address the humanitarian crisis that Israel had created effectively and a plan to drastically reduce casualties from the military strikes and show that they were successfully putting these plans in practice or conditions would be placed upon foreign aid for them from the United States. It appears that he was able to reduce tensions between Israel and Iran recently as well. Furthermore, it was due primarily to his efforts that Speaker Mike Johnson finally came around on Ukraine and we got the four bills passed and then turned into one law, HR 8035. This law passed because of President Biden. It was President Biden who was able to convince our European allies to help fund Ukraine’s fight against the aggression of Vladmir Putin’s Russian Federation. Furthermore, NATO grew, adding two new member states, Finland and Sweden, largely because of President Biden. The unemployment rate is 3.8% and the unemployment rate has been below four percent for 26 consecutive months while inflation has fallen to 3.5% from its apex of 9.1%. Furthermore, the gross domestic product grew at a rate of 3.1%, faster than any rate under Donald Trump. When we watch and listen to President Biden’s campaign speeches, there is no evidence of mental deterioration. He functions within normal parameters.
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If I wanted to and I had the time, I could follow Jack Shafer around for four years and record everything he said and did in public and then put out a carefully selected set of statements he made and things he did and make it look like he was unlikely to be able to dress himself. We all make errors. It’s part of being human. President Biden’s errors are not uncommon nor are they evidence of anything as he falls within a normal range in his speech and in his actions. Donald Trump’s problems are far more severe. Below is from one of my recommended list diaries entitled Imagine if President Biden had spoken these 'cognitive beauties' given by confused Donald Trump .
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Unfortunately, this short entitled, "Fox host OBLITERATES Trump live on air and leaves co-host speechless" cannot be shared in a way where the video actually appears in the diary. Therefore, I am reduced to giving a link to the video on YouTube.
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youtube.com/...
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https://youtube.com/shorts/0lgR4rWI3Gs?si=qTojxSdRLZJQe4zv
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What would Trumpers have said if President Biden had unleashed any of these 'cognitive beauties'? These are worse than anything President Biden has said. Here are some of the 'cognitive beauties' that the 77 year old Donald Trump unleashed on the American people:
Donald Trump said that you needed an ID to buy bread !
He said that he ran against former President Obama in 2016!
He warned that President Biden would get us into World War TWO which we already won ....IN 1945!
He confused Jeb Bush and President George W Bush and said that Jeb got us involved in the Middle East !
He called for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to be executed!
He called for the investigation into media outlets that weren't friendly to him!
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Sep 18, 2023 — In a gaffe-filled speech, Donald Trump said Joe Biden will start “World War II” and confused him with Obama. Then on “Meet the Press,” Trump ...
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President Biden may get a name or a date wrong. Donald Trump confuses people and generations. There is this unbridgeable chasm between the two.
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1. Donald Trump confuses Former Governor Jeb Bush (of his own home state, Florida) and Former President George W Bush, saying that Jeb Bush led us into the Iraq War. Only a president can use an AUMF to lead us into war. There is no way to plausibly deny that he knows or is familiar with these two people.
2. Donald Trump confuses Former Secretary Hillary Clinton and Former President Barack Obama. There is no way to plausibly deny that he knows these two people relatively well. Former President Obama was not eligible to run again in 2016 as it would have meant a third term if he had won. Yet, Donald Trump said that he ran against and defeated Former President Obama in the 2016 presidential election.
3. Donald Trump confuses current President Joe Biden and Former President Barack Obama. I know that Donald Trump has put forward a rescue device. However, the rescue device is not plausible. The rescue device is that he is saying President Obama in order to imply that President Biden is not capable of fulfilling the duties of his office. The truth is that Donald Trump did not know who the current president is on at least nine different occasions recently. We will take one example.
He said that Vladmir Putin does not respect the way that Obama governs. Clearly, Donald Trump means to refer to the current president. Why, otherwise, bring up somebody who hasn’t been in the White House since 2016? But the rescue device here attempted fails for at least seven reasons:
1. The attempted insult that Putin doesn’t respect the way that Obama (assume the rescue device so meaning Biden) governs is weakened if the insult (Obama is governing instead of President Biden) is true. This is true because we could simply have Joe Biden return to fulfilling his duties and perhaps Vladmir Putin would respect the way that the White House and the executive branch is governed more with Joe Biden in control. The rescue device weakens the attempted insult (but who really thinks that it is important for Vladmir Putin to think well of the American president???). Therefore, the rescue device is not plausible.
2. There is no hint of sarcasm in the voice of Donald Trump when he said that Vladmir Putin doesn’t respect the way that the president governs. Hence, it is not plausible to claim that Donald Trump is being sarcastic when he says that Barack Obama is governing the executive branch.
3. There is no hint of being facetious in his facial expression when Donald Trump said that Vladmir Putin doesn’t respect the way that the president governs. Hence, it is not plausible to claim that Donald Trump is being facetious when he says that Barack Obama is governing the executive branch.
4. If Donald Trump were picking somebody else to say that they were in charge of the executive branch instead of Joe Biden, it would not be Barack Obama because Former President Obama had far greater approval ratings than President Biden does at this time. Hence, it is not plausible to claim that Barack Obama is running the executive branch.
5. If Donald Trump were picking somebody else to say that they were in charge of the executive branch instead of Joe Biden, it would not be Barack Obama because Former President Obama is no longer even in government service. Since Former President Obama is no longer in government, it is not plausible to say that he is running the executive branch. Hence, it is not plausible to claim that Barack Obama is running the executive branch of the federal government.
6. If Donald Trump were picking somebody else to say that they were in charge of the executive branch instead of Joe Biden in order to insult Joe Biden and imply that he is incapacitated, he would have picked current Vice President Kamala Harris because of her lower polls. Therefore, it is not plausible for Donald Trump to say that he is saying that Barack Obama is running the executive branch as an insult to President Biden.
7. If Donald Trump were picking somebody else to say that they were in charge of the executive branch instead of Joe Biden in order to insult Joe Biden and imply that he is incapacitated, he would have picked current Vice President Kamala Harris because she actually holds the position from which the person to take over as president would emerge if the president. Therefore, it is not plausible for Donald Trump to say that he is saying that Barack Obama is running the executive branch as an insult to President Biden.
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I must add that Donald Trump’s statement that it is “common sense” that the insurrectionists would hang Former Vice President Mike Pence for not going along with his attempted coup is completely disqualifying.
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Robert Hur page 34:
“Okay. And I apologize if you’ve already addressed this, I just I just can’t recall. Do you know where your staff secured classified documents. you have you appear to have a photographic understanding and recall of the house “
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I had read some of the transcript of the interrogation of President Biden by Robert Hur. President Biden did recall the date of Beau’s death. Two other people said the year, “2015” and then President Biden says, “Was it 2015?” All three people could have said this at the same time and that’s one possible interpretation. However, it could be interpreted differently. Yet, it is natural for parents of adult children who die after a long period of illness to not remember the year. President Biden did initially wonder if the year that Trump won the presidential election was 2017, but that appears to be based upon seeing the year 2017 with him, President Biden, still in office as vice president in a picture or in some document. This is probably where the claim that he didn’t know when he was vice president came from. President Biden was incorrect to say that Robert Hur had brought it up. Robert Hur did not bring it up. I suspect that this came from the raw emotion of thinking about his son’s death and the criticism by Robert Hur and the media. I have read the first 90 pages of the two interviews. Thus far, nothing really abnormal stands out to me. From what I read, there is no basis for Robert Hur’s summary of President Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory”.
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This appears to be the Politico article that Jen is referring to . I found it in my second google search.
Here’s how it started: President Biden’s FAA nominee was withdrawing. Mark Walker, a reporter for the NY Times, talked with Assistant Press Secretary Abdullah Hasan about why this was happening. Hasan told Walker on background that it was because of “unfounded Republican attacks”. Since it was on background, it was never supposed to be an identified quote. Instead Walker included Hasan’s name. This is what happened next:
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When officials in the press shop called him Sunday morning about the mistake, they asked to speak with White House Editor Elizabeth Kennedy. But the number he gave them was the cell phone of Elisabeth Bumiller, the Times Washington bureau chief.
Bumiller, who was away from Washington visiting family, received a call from Emilie Simons, a White House deputy press secretary who had actually written the statement. According to three people familiar with the conversation, Simons asked that Hasan’s name be removed and the quote attributed to a nameless official. Bumiller, who expressed dismay that the issue had been escalated to her level, was reluctant to alter a story that had already been online for over 12 hours.
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While Emilie Simons was discussing her concern with the attribution and the broken protocol, Bumiller simply hung up. Then we have the following:
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The following day principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton emailed Bumiller asking the Times to reaffirm its commitment to abide by the administration’s rules about information given on background. For Dalton, Simons and others, it was about ensuring fairness with embargoed information so that all news organizations could be on a level playing field. But the Times’ bureau chief never replied. In response, the White House removed all Times reporters from its “tier one” email list for background information about various briefings and other materials, a situation that wasn’t resolved for 11 months.
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Of course, Politico is acting like the fault is equal between the two sides and that it is a trivial matter.
The Petty Feud Between the NYT and the White House
Biden’s people think they’re “entitled.” The Times says “they’re not being realistic.”
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This tells us that Bumiller simply doesn’t get it and that neither Bumiller nor the NY Times nor Politico get it:
Biden aides largely view the election as an existential choice for the country
.“They’re not being realistic about what we do for a living,” Bumiller told me. “You can be a force for democracy, liberal democracy. You don’t have to be a force for the Biden White House.”
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The way that this is phrased makes it clear at the very least that they believe the question of whether or not this is an existential choice for the country is debatable. How can these people not understand that it is not simply Biden aides, but the simple unvarnished truth?
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