This Week We’ll Know What This County is Made Of & What Trump’s Legal Prospects Look Like - Top 3 Takeaways – February 12th, 2024
- A telling week for a lot of reasons. There are rarely slow news weeks in a typical presidential election year during relatively normal times. But as we know, this isn’t your typical presidential election cycle, and these aren’t normal times. We have our first attempted presidential comeback since Herbert Hoover, with a former president far more popular within his own party than Hoover was within his, which has essentially had the former president running as the equivalent of an incumbent for the purposes of the party nomination season. Never before have we had a former president brought up on criminal charges of any sort, but here we are with four pending criminal cases and 91 different charges brought against the former president during a presidential election year. Never before have we had states attempting to remove qualified presidential candidates' names from ballots due to the insurrection clause, or any other clause for that matter, yet here we are with that having happened in two states with the case to decide the outcome currently before the United States Supreme Court. But all of those things are well known within this audience, and they’re all topics we’ve regularly discussed. What we’ve never had previously is a President of the United States running a campaign for reelection while clearly suffering from what appears to be signs of dementia. So much so that the nickname I’d occasionally used for President Biden in jest – Dementia Joe – doesn't feel appropriate because the likely condition has become a bit too real. The last time we had a president who wasn’t mentally able to carry out the duties was Woodrow Wilson at the tail end of his presidency – following a non-disclosed stroke – which happened during an era in which he was able to hide allowing his wife to carry out the duties of the office of the president. Conspiracy theories run wild these days regarding who's really carrying out the day-to-day decision-making duties for the leader of the free world...history often repeats itself and commonly serves as a guide so perhaps the first lady serves a bigger role in the day-to-day than is readily discussed. Nevertheless, I pointed out on Friday in the immediate aftermath of President Biden’s damning report from Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s report which essentially said that he isn’t pursuing charges against him, not because Joe Biden didn’t commit numerous crimes while placing our country’s national security at risk, but because he’s not mentally fit to stand trial. As I also highlighted, the findings of President Biden’s mental acuity were so directly damaging that the full spectrum of the mainstream media landscape from ABC to CBS and CNN to NBC all painted a similar, accurate depiction of the president. On Thursday night when I broke the news of President Biden calling an impromptu press conference to address the report (following a tip from a highly credible source), I thought there was a very real chance he was going to call it a political career. A saying I use frequently when learning is...
- “Once you know you can’t unknow”. Taylor Swift’s decision to enter leftist politics is one of those examples. Jimmy Buffet for that matter too – which btw, is one reason I’m not interested in seeing the Florida legislature rename A1A the Jimmy Buffet Memorial Highway, but I’ve digressed. When President Biden made it clear in Thursday night’s presser that his decision was to stand and fight, he made it worse. The it being the concerns over his mental health. Confusing the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico wasn’t the only issue. A CNN Fact Check headline read like this: Biden makes three false claims about his handling of classified information. Another CNN headline said that Biden’s presser made his situation worse... A Bloomberg report was headlined: Bad night for a furious Biden. Another headline was: Biden’s Attempt to Address Memory Issues Backfires With New Gaffe. The point is that about the only place in the media landscape that you could have gone over the past three days that was still carrying the water for ‘Ole Joe was MSNBC. So, the question now isn’t about President Biden’s waning mental abilities it’s about whether ours as a society are too. This week is about us as a country. President Biden was already a historically unpopular president with only Jimmy Carter having had a lower approval rating on the same date in his presidency. The question is what happens now. Preceding Thursday’s reveal that President Biden’s cognitive decline is so severe that he effectively isn’t fit to stand trial, President Biden’s average approval rating was 40.1%. The biggest tell for me about this country is what it’ll be after this week. I’ve marveled right along at voters who’ve taken a look at Joe Biden after historic geopolitical failures that have contributed to terrorists taking over Afghanistan, the first European ground invasion in Europe since World War II, the biggest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, 40+ year high inflation, the worst economic record since Jimmy Carter – with the average American 3% worse off financially than they were the day that Joe Biden become President of the United States, etc. But then turn around and say – yes I approve of that guy’s performance...give me some more of that sweet Joe Biden political action. Given the broad and generally accurate coverage of the revelations across the media landscape we’re now in a situation to where even as Rush would have said “low information voters”, know. And once you know that President Biden’s mind is effectively a dog that won’t hunt... You can’t unknow that. So, what is this country made of? We should have a pretty good idea by the end of the week. Speaking of which...we should also know about...
- Trump too. As it pertains to two key legal decisions pertaining to the former and perhaps future President of the United States. First, as soon as today, we should know whether the Trump legal team is going to appeal his presidential immunity case to the United States Supreme Court or whether they’ll attempt to have the case heard before the full D.C. Appellate Court. Today was the deadline for a decision issued last week by the 3-judge panel who ruled against the former president’s immunity challenge. The decision that is made and what results from that decision will determine if, and likely when, his January 6th related case in D.C. is rescheduled. It’s also likely that we’ll have a Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s ballot access case by the end of the week as well. This will be a telling week for this country. The biggest tell of all will be whether our country is as intellectually feeble as President Biden’s cognitive abilities appear to be. I’m a realist who errs on the side of optimism, so I’ll be looking for the lowest approval polls of Biden’s presidency this week, along with Trump gaining access to all state’s presidential ballots...However, as it pertains to Trump, I’ll also be expecting the D.C. Appeals court immunity decision to stand. Buckle up. There are no slow news weeks in presidential election years. Especially one this insane. Whoops, probably a poor choice of words considering the president’s condition. Make that a crazy week...never mind. In any event I’m not sure ‘Ole Joe will be able to shake it off as well, as say, Taylor Swift who managed to upstage the Super Bowl halftime show with her presence and a kiss for Travis Kelce following the Chiefs overtime Super Bowl win.