Welcome back in for Al’s Afternoon Tea, where we sample and savor some of the latest.

“Big Boy” Presser Puts Big Guy Under Pressure

At 5:30 p.m., Joe Biden is scheduled to hold a rare press conference, another in a thus-far unsuccessful string of efforts to show he is still mentally capable of serving as president. With no grasp of the condescension involved, both Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and White House spokesman John Kirby refer to today’s event as a “Big Boy” press conference.

It certainly is a big deal. 

For the first time in this administration, Biden will face a White House press corps that isn’t going to totally coddle him. (Oh, they’ll still pull their punches, because who — aside from NYC crazies, youth gangs and illegally immigrated criminals — wants to hit decrepit senior citizens with everything they’ve got?) Since Biden tends to get angry when asked even slightly challenging questions, this could get ugly. It could make Trump’s interactions with hostile White House reporters look like chit-chat with Mr. Rogers.

Since Biden is historically fond of plagiarism, perhaps he will borrow from President Richard Nixon’s Watergate speeches. “The American people have a right to know if their president is a vegetable. I am not a vegetable.”

However, Biden does have a new card to play. Much of the reason Democrats are trying to force him out have to do not with his incapacity, but with how he’s going to lose the election and yank them down with him like people handcuffed to the railing of a sinking ship. However, a new Fox News poll puts the presidential race in a dead heat. Are you really going to toss out the candidate who earned the nomination from Democratic voters when the race is tied with less than four months to go? A lot can happen in 116 days. That would be his argument. (He’ll ignore the part of the poll that shows more than 60% of Dem voters want him to step down.)

Of course, the real question isn’t Biden’s ability to win, especially when massive trickery is involved. (If you don’t believe me, you have to watch our ongoing series “How They Stole the 2020 Election: Let My People Go Explains the Steal in Bite-Sized Digestible Pieces.” Part 14 just went up today.) Even that aside, it’s an affront to democracy to force out a duly-chosen nominee simply because the polling numbers look bad. And it is particularly odious and self-defeating when the theme of the whole campaign is that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy.”

The real question is whether Joe Biden is mentally fit to continue serving as president for the next 116 days, much less the next four years — a question that grows louder by the hour.

World Leaders Concerned as Biden Forgets One He Knows Well

Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer, who has been attending the NATO meetings in Washington, D.C. this week, said world leaders all showed concern for Biden’s deterioration. Bremmer told MSNBC’s Katy Tur that Biden even failed to recognize one leader he “knew quite well.”

Meanwhile, NBC News’s Chuck Todd admits a senior cabinet member expressed worries about Biden’s mental state two years ago.

“He can’t run again like this,” this official said.

But did Todd report it, pursue it? Nope. He admits to cowardice on that one. “This is one of those, you know, it’s the classic open secrets, a non-versation, right? It’s the story everybody knows and … everybody was afraid to talk about.”

Why? This isn’t an average ol’ grandpa we’re talking about. This guy has his finger on the nuclear button.

Todd said something else that shows a second Biden front is collapsing. He thinks the president’s refusal to step down exposes his true nature.

I can’t believe he has put his family through this. And now, looking at his behavior now, in clinging to this, I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change, in that everything’s always been about his ambition and his ambition comes first.

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd says Biden’s refusal to step aside has made him “rethink a lot of the Biden biography. I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018…You look at what has happened, I can’t believe he has put his… pic.twitter.com/gi7dgiF6Be

— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) July 10, 2024

If your reassessment concludes that Biden’s only in it for himself (ironically, the very thing Biden accuses Trump of), then it’s a short jump to finally admitting he used his offices for personal gain for himself and his family.

Will Democrats and the media finally get on board with the House impeachment inquiry? Admit that Biden Inc. took in millions from our enemies in pay-to-play schemes? Can they finally admit that Joe Biden is “The Big Guy”?

Obama Behind It All?

I don’t want to say former President Barack Obama is conducting this effort to oust Biden, but his new Secret Service code name is “Leonard Bernstein.”

Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough reported this morning: “I’ll just say one thing that we do have to underline here, just so viewers can follow what’s going on behind the scenes, is the Biden campaign and many Democratic officials do believe that Barack Obama is quietly working behind the scenes to orchestrate this.”

Further evidence? Politico’s Rachel Bade reports that George Clooney spoke with Obama before penning his New York Times essay urging Biden to step down.

SCOOP: @BarackObama and George Clooney were in touch before the actor wrote his brutal op-ed suggesting Biden was a diminished man who should step aside from the presidency.

Obama did not encourage or advise him on the op-ed, but he did not try to dissuade him either.

Read…

— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) July 11, 2024

What a typical Obama move. “Obama did not encourage or advise him on the op-ed, but he did not try to dissuade him either”? Sure. And it’s just coincidence that two of his speechwriters came out the same day saying Biden should quit the race.

Reminds me of the real insurrection. That one took place on  January 5, 2017, when Obama met with Biden, James Clapper, James Comey, John Brennan, Loretta Lynch, and Susan Rice to discuss how to use the bogus Trump-Russia investigation to sabotage the incoming Trump administration. On Inauguration Day, Rice wrote about the meeting, adding a CYA line about Obama saying he wanted everything done “by the book.”

Obama is dirty. But he always wants to make it appear that his hands are clean. As I wrote when the story broke,

Yeah, and in A Few Good Men Colonel Jessup ordered Cpl. Santiago not to be touched. (Before secretly ordering the “Code Red” that got Santiago killed.) America, we can handle the truth.

And the truth is that Barack Obama has ordered the “Code Red” on Joe Biden.

Giving Kamala a Helping Hand

Do other Cabinet members recognize Biden’s cognitive decline? After all, constitutionally, they do have a role in invoking the 25th Amendment.

Speaker of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson has urged Kamala Harris to consider invoking the 25th Amendment. He also said there’s little chance she will actually do so. Perhaps if it was explained to her through one of her beloved Venn diagrams. Johnson can personally drive the diagram down Pennsylvania Avenue to her, perhaps in a yellow school bus.

On the Stream Menu

We will be doing a wrap-up of Biden’s press conference later this evening, assuming it isn’t canceled at the last moment.

Stream Contributor Alex Chediak has a new one up: “GOP Abortion Language Draft: Prelude to Defeat?”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.