ON THE HOLMES FRONT
Biden’s cheat sheet exposed
By Frank Holmes
If you want to know where Joe Biden’s presidency is going, the writing
is on the wall — or maybe, on the cue cards.
President Biden opened fresh questions about his mental acuity last
week, as cameras caught the 79-year-old president reviewing cue cards
that look like they were written for a first grader.
Last Thursday, the president was supposed to give detailed remarks on
the complicated-sounding “Federal State Offshore Wind Implementation
Partnership.” But as he turned over one of his cards to read the
talking points on the back, he exposed a cheat sheet on the other
side.
The “Sequence of Events” printed on the back, and supposed to be seen
by no one but the president, sounds like a Dick and Jane book:
—”YOU enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants.”
—”YOU take YOUR seat.”
—”Press enters.”
—”YOU give brief comment (2 minutes).”
—”Press departs.”
—”YOU ask Liz Shuler, President, AFL-CIO, a question (NOTE: Liz is
joining virtually.) “
—”YOU thank participants.”
—”YOU depart.”
A lot of Americans who saw the cheat sheet responded by saying: YOU
got to be kidding me!
“‘YOU inhale. YOU exhale. YOU inhale. YOU exhale,’” wrote
DailyWire.com founder Ben Shapiro.
“They literally have to write out every basic instruction for Joe
Biden,” wrote Outkick.com founder and radio talk show host Travis
Clay. ”Biden has dementia. It’s clear to anyone with a functional
brain.”
Even those who didn’t want to go so far as to diagnose the president’s
psychological state said the notes did not appear to be written for a
functional adult, much less the president.
“Yes, everyone uses notes sometimes. But these notes were something
else,” wrote Nick Arama at RedState.com. ”They were a list — made up
by someone else — that told him what to do, that treated him like a
five-year-old child, directing him how to act during an event—even
when to sit.”
“This isn’t about a stutter, people. These are instructions to the
incoherent,” he wrote.
This isn’t the first time Biden has been caught using a cheat sheet to
help jog his memory, but the instructions have gotten progressively
worse — showing staffers trust Biden to do less and less every time
he’s in public.
Last March, photographers caught Biden leafing through an enormous,
fold-out cheat sheet that had the names of reporters, next to their
pictures, with the ones he was supposed to call on circled.
When Biden visited Louisiana to survey damage from Hurricane Ida six
months later, reporters snapped a picture of Biden with another cheat
sheet.
This one had the names and faces of local officials—something that’s
not that unusual, unless you need them everywhere you go.
But letting Biden call on reporters, or talk to local officials,
proved too dangerous.
This March, Biden accidentally revealed that his staff wrote out a set
of “Tough Putin Q&A Talking Points” — super-short, one-sentence
answers for the “commander-in-chief” to deflect questions about a
major foreign policy gaffe: his statement that Russian President
Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
Now, White House staffers don’t even trust the president to read
one-sentence answers. The notes tell him how to enter a room, script
out every word of his two-minute response, and then tell him how to
leave.
Staffers may have told Biden that the president of the AFL-CIO “is
joining virtually” so he won’t get confused looking for her — the way
he appeared confused in April, when he tried two shake hands with
nobody, twice. That was about the same time a staffer dressed as the
Easter Bunny had to shoo Biden away from the media by himself.
“Can Joe Biden do anything without a cheat sheet?” asked Fox News
personality Lisa Boothe last fall.
It turns out lots of Americans are asking the same question. In March,
only 23 percent of voters said they strongly believe Biden is mentally
stable, while 34 percent strongly believe he’s mentally unfit for
office. Things have only gone downhill since then. A majority of
registered voters — 53 percent — said they question Biden’s mental
state, and 62 percent say they think Biden might be too old in a
Harvard-Harris poll taken in May.
“It’s abundantly clear he’s not operating on full cylinders. He should
be in retirement, not leading a country,” said Booth. “It’s time we
start talking about it more. Everyone sees it.”
At least, everyone who has read all the cheat sheets sees it.
* * * * *
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative
that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The
Holmes Front.”
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