Former President Barack Obama apparently got the dream he had hoped for, spilling the beans during an interview with CBS's Late Show host Stephen Colbert.
When asked whether he regretted not being eligible to run again, Obama replied: "I’ve said this before: People would ask me, 'Knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term?' And I used to say, 'You know what, if I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front-man or a front-woman and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement with my sweats looking through the stuff and I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony.”
Although there is no evidence that Obama’s successor had an earpiece directly connected to him, there can be no doubt that several among 74 of President Joe Biden’s first 100 top White House leadership picks with former Obama administration positions had Joe’s ear.
Obama U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, for example, who served as President Biden’s domestic policy council director, has been described by former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell as the real Oval Office leader and "shadow president."
Ron Klain, who previously served as V.P. Biden’s chief of staff and played a key role in coordinating the Obama administration’s response to the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, became President Biden’s chief of staff until he left that post last year.
A key Klain role was to manage Biden’s day-to-day activities … arguably one of the easiest tasks in Washington given that according to an analysis by the Republican National Committee, Joe has spent about 40% of his term of office on vacation — 532 days as of last September.
That’s about 12 times more than the 11 days of annual vacation received by an average worker who doesn’t lead the nation and free world.
As reported by The Wall Street Journal, White House staff have been pretty much running the place even when Joe is present, determining when he is sufficiently alert to attend important meetings, whom he can talk to and what he should be informed about. They often act as go-betweens, essentially taking on presidential roles.
As observed, the structure was also designed to “prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches, or upset the world order.”
Based upon interviews with nearly 50 people having direct inside knowledge, the Journal notes that “Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories,” including pollster surveys showing him trailing in the 2024 race.
In addition to Klain, key influential staff individuals mentioned reportedly include Steve Ricchetti, like Klain a former V.P Biden chief of staff, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who is best known for previously having initiated secret talks with Iranian officials that led to Obama’s disastrous 2015 "Iran Nuclear Deal."
President Biden also held few and diminishing Cabinet meetings — three in 2021, two in 2022, and only one this year. By comparison, Obama held 19, and Trump held 25.
Biden’s final Cabinet meeting featured wife, Jill, seated at the head of the table, traditionally reserved for presidents, with other Cabinet members seated in order of the founding of their departments.
For some, this remarkable breach of protocol signifies the greatest influence of a first lady over workings of the executive branch since Edith Wilson tightly controlled access to her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, after he suffered a debilitating stroke in October 1919.
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan makes exactly this referenced Edith Wilson comparison, a need to compensate and cover up for “the president who [cognitively] wasn’t there.”
Noonan recounts how Edith Bolling Wilson, with awareness of top administration aides, failed to acknowledge that following a series of strokes and during the president’s illness “she executed the physical and most of the mental duties of his office” and “enshrouded the presidency in as much secrecy as possible.”
In her memoirs, Edith said she studied every paper, report, and communique to decide “what was important and what was not,” transmitted “her husband’s views” to Cabinet members and lawmakers, and remained with the president when an official was allowed in so that there would be no “misunderstanding” on what was said.
Regardless of whether or not Edith Wilson’s actions were in the interest of protecting the country as people close to her urged at the time, let’s be very clear that any suggested parallels to motives and behaviors to Jill Biden and others encamped with her don’t line up.
President Woodrow Wilson’s unexpected series of debilitating strokes came after he was elected, whereas Jill Biden must certainly have been aware of Joe’s alarming cognitive decline prior to his first 2016 basement bunker campaign.
Yes, the entire Biden family obviously knew this, as did the Democratic Party leadership, including former President Obama and a complicit partisan press with members that traveled in his circles.
Nevertheless, they gaslit the president’s increasingly incoherent pronouncements as inconsequential gaffes while insulating him from access by inquiring press correspondents and other uncontrolled public inquiries.
Even worse, they encouraged him to run again, shamefully recognizing an unlikelihood that he would cognitively or physically finish out another term of office — until the disgraceful jig was finally up following exposure in his disastrous presidential debate with Trump.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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