This Piece From the ‘Wall Street Journal’ Has a Familiar Stench

On Wednesday, the WSJ uncorked a piece that would have done ol’ Bob proud. The subject was the current president, who the Journal and its (overwhelmingly Republican) sources fitted for a hospital gown and a lifetime of dinners of oatmeal. The piece is paywalled, so I’m relying on accounts of the accounts but, judging by the former, this reeks of being a clumsy hit piece of questionable motivation, as we shall see. From the Times of Israel:

The majority of those who expressed concern were Republicans, said the WSJ, but some Democrats also asserted that Biden, the oldest-ever serving president of America, had shown signs of decline. The article said the accounts describe “an unevenness” in meetings though “not the caricature of an addled leader that some of his political opponents draw.” Listing some of the worrying lapses, the report cited six people who said House Speaker Mike Johnson revealed in February his concerns that Biden’s memory had slipped about details of the administration’s energy policies as he tried to discuss them during a meeting.

I’m sure that Speaker Moses’ intentions were good Christian intentions, as pure as the good Christian snow, and the fact that he was otherwise occupied this week with threatening to sic the Congress and the Supreme Court on those Manhattan prosecutors who had the audacity to call a crooked president* a crooked president* did not enter into his mind at all.

In a key January meeting on Ukraine military aid, according to the Journal, “the president moved so slowly around the Cabinet Room to greet the nearly two dozen congressional leaders that it took about 10 minutes for the meeting to begin, some people who attended recalled.”…Attendees also had trouble hearing Biden, as he read general points that had already been agreed upon from notes and repeatedly deferred to others, according to five people who were there. The president also paused or closed his eyes for lengthy periods, leaving some to wonder if had “tuned out,” the report said.

Good Lord, have any of these people ever seen this president in a crowd? He’s a king schmoozer. He would’ve made a magnificent Irish undertaker. And he uses notes? Oh, my stars and whiskers. And I find it more than a little convenient that, after a solid month of stories about how El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago was dozing off at the defense table during his own criminal trial, we have “some” who “wonder” if he’d “tuned out.”

It has become obvious since the 34 verdicts came down that it’s all hands on deck for conservatives to push back. The Republican members of Congress did rapid response sucking-up as the flying squads of the cyber-vigilantes sprang into action. And ther’s Judge Aileen Cannon down in Florida, opening a hearing on the legitimacy of Jack Smith’s investigation to every Tom, Dick, and Leonard Leo who wants to put an oar in. (Here’s the Interceptwith a backgrounder on one of these special guest stars.) Late Wednesday, an appeals court in Georgia shut down Fani Willis’ election interference case while it studies an appeal from the defense of trial Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to allow Willis to continue to prosecute the case. It is more than a litle ironic that, the day before, a lawyer named Mike Roman was indicted in Wisconsin for his alleged role in the phony-electors scheme in that state. Also indicted by Willis in Georgia on similar charges, it was Roman who was behind the strategy to monkey-wrench those proceedings by calling attention to Willis’ former relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade. There will be more and more of this unless and until the former president loses so regularly in court that even is most fervent acolytes notice…and maybe not even then. The ride is far from over, and its destination is ever uncertain.