Joe Biden had no clothes

Tomorrow, January 20, Donald Trump will be inaugured as President of the United States for the second time. Not consecutively, but with a four year interval, and this interval hides a horror story that was clearly depicted in a New York Times article yesterday, Saturday, January 18, 2025.

It is the story of how Joe Biden and his inner circle - his wife, his son, his staff, his administration - conspired to hide from the nation and the world his physical and mental decrepitude.

It is not a matter of age. Some people age well. Joe Biden aged badly, very badly.

I remember vividly when he went to Normandy, France, last year, to celebrate the eightieth anniversary of D-Day.

I saw it on television: Joe Biden staring vacantly into space, unaware of where he was, while the other guests were walking away at the end of the ceremony. Someone had to be sent to retrieve him.

A French politician remarked that Joe Biden was “dans les vapes” - in a fog.

It was akin to repeating the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen story shouting: “The Emperor has no clothes”. But the Biden inner circle kept insisting on hiding his nakedness from the nation and the world.

I remember when Biden tripped over a sand bag and fell at the Air Force Academy in June 2023. It was not the falling, it happens. It was about the fact that he could not get up. He had to be physically lifted to his feet by the security.

Two months before this incident, Joe Biden had announced that he was running again, betraying his pledge in 2020 that he would serve just one term, that he would be a “transition president”, that his job would be finished after doing the nation and the world the great favor of kicking Trump out of the White House.

Now Trump is back.

The stories in The New York Times report are just horrendous: How Joe Biden aides would surround him when he walked from the White House to the waiting presidential helicopter on the South Lawn, so that the TV cameras were unable to show his awkward gait; how they would make him use a teleprompter even when having to say just two or three sentences to donors or journalists; how they had to come up with a shorter set of steps for him to climb when boarding the Air Force One; how he fell off his bike when braking to talk to a group of onlookers.

How Biden would confuse dates and events; how he referred to the President of Egypt as President of Mexico.

And through it all, his wife Jill, his son Hunter - the same person he issued a morally inexcusable Presidential pardon to - and his aides did their utmost to hide from the Nation that Biden was not up to a second term.

Then came the disastrous debate with Donald Trump on June 27, 2024. Even after that, Joe Biden still clung for three weeks to the delusion that he could run again.

Four years had been wasted, leaving the Democrats with no time to run a credible campaign for the Presidency.

Now Donald Trump is being inaugurated, again. This is Joe Biden’s legacy: he resurrected Donald Trump.