In a welcome move, President Donald Trump signaled he’s going after the truth about what was happening—and who was running the show—during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Trump signed an executive order Wednesday mandating an investigation into “whether certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the president.”
Let’s go Brandon.
Sure, the Left is quick to argue this is all nonsense. In a “news” piece, The New York Times decried it as “the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office.”
The “conspiracy theory” slur is nothing new when it comes to attacks on Republicans for daring to question whether Biden was actually the only one acting as president. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaking in a May press conference a few days after the Biden prostate cancer revelation, criticized Republicans for “peddling conspiracy theories and want[ing] us to look backward.”
USA Today columnist Rex Huppke, in a May column headlined “Republicans keep clinging to Biden’s health to ignore Trump’s decline,” said that questions about whether Biden had been aware of his cancer diagnosis prior to the public announcement was “a shiny new right-wing conspiracy theory.”
Alas for leftists, just because you wish something was a conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it is.
Related: House Oversight Committee Expanding Investigation Into Biden ‘Cover-Up’
We don’t know whether Biden knew about his cancer diagnosis for a significant period before his public announcement.
And no, I don’t think Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by a clone. (The New York Times, still apparently unable to process Trump’s joy of trolling, is doing significant handwringing over a Trump repost on Truth Social last weekend of a user speculating thus about Biden.)
But what we do know is that Biden was most definitely not consistently OK during his presidency. We all saw that debate in June 2024, where it was clear that Biden was not mentally sharp, to say the least.
And now, thanks to CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios national correspondent Alex Thompson’s book, “Original Sin,” we know that there were plenty of incidents that showed Biden was struggling with his health and his memory during his time as president.
According to “Original Sin,” Biden literally didn’t recognize actor George Clooney at a June 2024 fundraiser. But Clooney shouldn’t be too upset: Biden also apparently struggled to remember the name of Mike Donilon, who had worked with Biden for over four decades. He also mixed up the name of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“The people closest to Biden landed on some techniques to handle (or disguise) what was happening: restricting urgent business to the hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; instructing his writers to keep his speeches brief so that he didn’t have to spend too much time on his feet; having him use the short stairs to Air Force One,” wrote The New York Times in a review of “Original Sin.”
An unnamed Cabinet secretary told the “Original Sin” authors that he no longer briefed Biden directly toward the end of his presidency. Instead, the secretary briefed White House aides, who in turn said they would brief Biden.
“Yes, the president is ‘making the decisions,’ but if the inner circle is shaping them in such a way, is it really a decision? Are they leading him to something?” the Cabinet secretary said.
Is the anonymous Cabinet secretary a conspiracy theorist?
Sure, Biden says in a written statement, “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
But is that really credible given what we are learning about his presidency?
Related: House Oversight Demands Answers About ‘Cover Up’ Of Biden’s Health Decline
The Left was very fond of the 25th Amendment back in Trump’s first term. Yet somehow now, it’s inexcusable for Trump to probe who exactly was making the decisions during Biden’s presidency, despite compelling evidence that Biden was certainly not mentally fit to be president 24/7 all four years.
In March, The Oversight Project issued a report discussing autopen usage in the Biden administration. “We conclude that individuals in the Biden administration other than the president appear to have used a device called an autopen to affix the president’s signature onto some of the most controversial clemency warrants of his presidency,” states the memo.
Trump has also highlighted the issue. “Essentially, whoever used the autopen was the president, and that is wrong, it’s illegal, it’s so bad, and it’s so disrespectful to our country,” he said Thursday.
Trump’s remarks get to the crux of the issue.
Yes, previous presidents—including Trump—have used autopens. But the autopen usage, paired with the clear evidence of mental decline and active aides, raises questions about whether Biden himself definitively signed off on every use of the autopen—or other decisions.
It’s laughable to think Biden was actually able to be president by only working 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. There were undeniably decisions that had to be made outside those hours, and who was making them is a fair question.
The American people elected Biden. They didn’t elect Jill Biden or his aides. As the evidence mounts that Biden was cognitively impaired in office, it’s not partisan—or conspiratorial—to try to uncover what exactly happened during the past four years and demand accountability.
Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.