Who is actually leading fight to keep Joe Biden in power

As the calls for Joe Biden to stand down grow louder and louder, there is one voice that is working even harder to ensure the President stays in the race.

ANALYSIS

Forget all the talk of Kamala Harris assuming the mantle of the presidency from an addled Joe Biden.

As the US president slowly unspools in front of the eyes of the world and America’s enemies, it is not the vice president who is stepping up but rather the First Lady, Dr Jill Biden.

Because as unlikely as it seems, the Bidens are brazening it out.

Two weeks after US president Joe Biden’s epic, 90-minute long debate brain freeze left apologists for his condition with no place to hide, the president and his family have made it clear they have absolutely no intention of leaving the White House early or giving up their hopes of another term.

And it is Jill – long said to be addicted to the trappings of office – who is leading the fight to keep Joe in power.

US President Joe Biden and First lady Jill Biden.

Fresh off her post-debate performance, in which she cheered her husband on for “answering every question”, Dr Biden has hit the campaign trail.

While the White House promised Monday that the president would soon hold, in the words of one official, a “big boy press conference”, Dr Biden did a one-day, three-state swing on behalf of her husband’s campaign.

First Lady Jill Biden praised her husband for answering all the questions at last month’s debate.

“For all the talk out there about this race, Joe has made it clear that he’s all in,” Dr. Biden told a crowd at a North Carolina brewery.

“That’s the decision he’s made, and just as he has always supported my career, I am all in too,” she said.

And then, in a fit of hopeful optimism, she declared: “And with four more years, Joe will continue to fight for you.”

Dr Biden also attacked reporters for “screaming” at her and asking her what her message was to Democrats calling for her husband to drop out of the race.

There has not been anything like this in American history, at least not since First Lady Edith Wilson informally ran the country during the last two years of her husband Woodrow’s administration after he was incapacitated by a stroke.

And for the moment at least, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

The American system is not like a Westminster parliament where a leader can be rolled by his party room, something that would have happened ages ago were Biden a prime minister and not a president.

A reflection on the side of a vehicle shows Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, stepping into a car upon arrival at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, DC, on July 1, 2024. Hunter Biden was travelling with his father who returned to Washington for the first time after the first presidential debate in Atlanta on June 27. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)

The US Constitution is not much help either.

Its framers never made provision for removing an incapacitated president, though a complex and untested amendment passed in the 1960s provides a mazelike way to remove the chief executive involving the cabinet and both houses of Congress.

And as far as running for another term goes, Biden has all the delegates he needs to hold the Democrat nomination and remain on the ticket.

But while Dr Biden is leading the charge, she’s not the only family member digging in.

Wayward son Hunter, who’s “laptop from Hell” would have derailed his father’s 2020 candidacy had intelligence agents and social media giants not conspired to quash the story, is reportedly the president’s de facto “gatekeeper”.

Along with policing access to his father, Hunter is said to be helping to write speeches and even sitting in on meetings – a shocking state of affairs given that the convicted felon with a history of drug abuse would likely not even be allowed in the same room as the president were he not his son.

Little wonder.

With more criminal charges including a felony tax matter pending, Hunter may very well need his dad’s pardon power to stay out of jail.

Meanwhile speculation continues to grow over the president’s condition, but even that hits a wall of connections tied to the Biden family.

White House physician Kevin O’Connor, who has provided rosy assessments of the president’s health yet also met eight times at the White House with a prominent Parkinson’s disease expert, is said to be a family “intimate” who once explored a business deal with the president’s brother, Jim.

With the president’s failings in plain sight, it is clear that the country and the world is the victim of a great cover-up, and one that was aided and abetted by many in the press who sought to police what ordinary people were allowed to know lest they make the wrong decision and vote for Trump.

The great irony is that for all the Democrats’ stoking worry that a re-elected Trump might decide to never leave office, Joe Biden is not only resisting calls to step aside or at least not contest the next election, but is refusing to come clean about his condition.