The old saying has it that you go broke in phases. First, gradually. Then, all at once. Politically speaking, Joe Biden has entered phase two.
Like the end of an unspoken pandemic-emergency exemption, time is up on the forgiveness of Biden’s debts to the American public. The president is suddenly facing a drawer full of overdue bills—on his border policy, his health, his scandals, and more. And some of his investors have become creditors.
Beginning with Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, an informal alliance of political figures, media, and the Trump-traumatized masses protected him on a range of potentially harmful issues. They denied the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s damning laptop, then they downplayed it. They shamed those who questioned the aging Biden’s fitness. They celebrated Biden’s border policy because it wasn’t Donald Trump’s, and then they looked the other way when it proved to be worse. And When Biden turned out to be the most media-weary, least accessible president in modern history, the press took it on the chin and agreed to softball, set-piece interviews as doled out by the White House.
No more. The Biden family’s shady business dealing is now covered as legitimate news, because it has to be. The lid on the story can’t hide the details bubbling out: the 2020 Biden campaign and intelligence officials colluding on a cover-up, a whistleblower alleging favoritism in the IRS investigation of Hunter, millions in foreign payments and offshore shell companies. It’s become impossible to pretend that this is a mere tabloid saga about drug addiction, prostitutes, and paternity. The New York Times reports: “Businesses connected to Hunter Biden received more than $10 million from foreign companies, some with criminal ties,” “President Biden has falsely denied his son had ties to Chinese businesses,” and “Officials allied with Mr. Biden played a role in wrongly discrediting Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
Similarly, those who were once willing to look the other way on Biden’s physical and mental fitness can no longer ignore the gravity of the matter. The 77-year-old who was elected in 2020 might as well be the son of the 80-year-old who now occupies the White House. Biden neither speaks nor moves like he did then. The slips and gaffes that spurred sympathetic stories about his struggling with a lifelong “stutter” have given way to indecipherable non-sequiturs. It’s not an open secret that Democrats and supporters are worried about Biden’s age and ability. It’s an open book. And in a recent Washington Post-ABC poll, only 32 percent of respondents said that Biden possesses the mental acuity to serve as president. The White House’s effort to hide the president from the public for two years has backfired. When he pops up now, his condition is made all the more concerning by the illusion of its seeming suddenness.
When Biden took office, the Democrats and the media treated illegal immigration concerns as racist MAGA dog whistling. But after two years of Biden’s border policies and record-high illegal immigration, there’s no denying the fiasco. Liberal media outlets now report on the recent failure to keep migrant children safe, and Democratic mayors of New York and Chicago have been in open revolt against Biden’s policies and the burden they place on municipal resources. According to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the city “is being destroyed by the migrant crisis.” A recent poll by the Global Strategy Group found that only 32 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the southern border. And things are only going to get worse as the emergency Title 42 deportation measure is lifted and the number of asylum-seekers swells.
It’s not just that Biden is reaping what he sowed. It’s that the press has soured on a White House that treats them with disdain. The New York Times reports, “despite his press secretary pledging that Mr. Biden would ‘bring transparency and truth back to the government,’ in his first two years, the president granted the fewest interviews since Mr. Reagan’s presidency: only 54.” Over the same length of time, Trump gave 202, and Barack Obama gave 275. Recently, the Washington Post editorial board wrote, “The president and his team promised transparency. Instead, he is stonewalling the media.” And so he’s losing the sympathetic coverage he relied on.
None of this means Biden is doomed to lose his bid for reelection. But it goes some way in explaining why a recent Washington Post poll found that “44 percent of voting-age adults say they would ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ vote for Trump while 38 percent would definitely or probably vote for Biden.” There’s no moratorium on eviction from the People’s House.
