President Biden was interviewed by The New Yorker by a reporter who last interviewed Biden in 2020 when Biden called himself a transitional candidate. Most people assumed he would be a one-term president.
But no. At the age of 81, Biden’s ego won’t let him do the right thing and go retire to his beach house in Delaware. He now says that he always knew he would run for re-election. He justifies his decision by pointing to two things – he is proud of his record and wants it to keep going, and he thinks that most of what he has done in office is just now kicking in.
That’s enough to send a shiver up the spine of anyone who has seen the deterioration of the United States at the hands of Biden and his administration. However, be prepared to hear those reasons for Biden running coming out of the mouths of his campaign surrogates and other Democrats. This will be their story and they are sticking to it.
The interview with Biden began oddly. Biden let his obsession with Donald Trump show. He took the reporter to a room off the Oval Office where Trump watched the riots on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. It was the Oval Office dining room, a small room. He wanted the reporter to see the television Trump installed in that room and where Trump was that day. Even the reporter noted that it showed how Trump consumes Biden’s thoughts.
But, never fear, the interview is a puff piece meant to show Biden as able and ready to serve four more years.
For decades, there was a lightness about Joe Biden—a springy, mischievous energy that was hard not to like, even if it allowed some people to classify him as a lightweight. For better and worse, he is a more solemn figure now. His voice is thin and clotted, and his gestures have slowed, but, in our conversation, his mind seemed unchanged. He never bungled a name or a date. At one point, he pulled out a white notecard inscribed with some of Trump’s most alarming comments: his threat to terminate the Constitution, his casual talk of being a dictator on “Day One,” his description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.” Biden tossed the list on his desk and gave a look of disbelief. “What the hell! ” he said. “If you and I had sat down ten years ago and I said a President is going to say those things, you would have looked at me like, ‘Biden, you’ve lost your senses.’ ”
Ugh.
Biden was not anything but a lightweight during his decades in the Senate. He’s a plagiarizer and a liar. He was a part of the Senate Democrats who turned Senate Judicial Committee hearings for Supreme Court nominees into a hate fest. It was in the days of Robert Bork and then the confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas.
Biden still has it out for Justice Thomas. He took the opportunity to take a stab at Thomas during the interview. Biden wants to convince voters that Thomas wants to take away access to birth control and other absurdities.
Since Dobbs, twenty-one states have tightened restrictions on abortion. The prospect of a further rollback looms. In a concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the legal rationale for overturning Roe could be applied to “correct the error” in cases on same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of homosexuality, and access to contraception. I asked Biden if he thought that the Justices would undo those protections. “I don’t think there’s a majority to go there,” he said, but added, “I think that a couple on the Court would go considerably further”—specifically “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”
“Thomas?” I asked.
Biden grinned.
It’s the height of hypocrisy to slam Thomas for accepting invitations from wealthy friends. Joe Biden vacations in the homes of billionaires several times a year. Biden is in the hot seat for the corrupt dealings of the Biden crime family. He is known as The Big Guy who always gets his cut of the action. Accusing anyone else of ethical problems is beyond the pale. Besides, Thomas has no ethical problems. And, Thomas is known for his love of hopping in his RV and traveling the country with his wife when the Supreme Court is in recess. He’s the everyman that Biden pretends to be.
Anyway, the interview is cringeworthy, at least to a reader who is not a slobbering Biden loyalist. There will be plenty more of them before the November election.