President Joe Biden
is out of the running for a second term, but Congress still wants answers about who’s been running the executive branch and the “cover-up” of Biden’s cognitive condition.
“We’ve identified the four people in the White House who we believe were the primary parties involved in the cover-up, three staffers as well as the [White House] physician,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer
, R-Ky., told The Daily Signal on Thursday, the day after Biden’s Oval Office address about not seeking reelection.
“The White House is doing what they do with all of our investigations, they’re obstructing, but there has clearly been a cover-up,” Comer added.
The oversight committee seeks interviews with Dr. Kevin O’Connor, physician to the president.
Earlier this month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she had talked with O’Connor, who told her that Biden had not been evaluated since February. Biden said in a call with Democrat governors
that he was just checked out by a doctor and everything was fine.
The committee subpoenaed three senior White House staffers for depositions: Annie Tomasini
, deputy White House chief of staff; Ashley Williams,
special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations; and Anthony Bernal
, assistant to the president and senior adviser to first lady Jill Biden.
“We expect to interview those employees,” Comer told The Daily Signal.
In less than a month after Biden’s poor debate performance June 27 against challenger Donald Trump, many Democrats piled on to push Biden out of the presidential race. Most came close to admitting what many Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators have speculated about in questioning Biden’s cognitive capacity.
“The question remains, who’s been calling the shots? Is it Hunter Biden
?” Comer said, naming the president’s son, who recently was convicted on a gun charge and faces trial in the fall on tax charges. “Was it these three staffers?”
Comer added that Americans should know if there is a “shadow government.” He questioned what Vice President Kamala Harris
, who Biden endorsed to succeed him, knew regarding the president’s condition.
“Was Kamala in charge? Who was in charge? I don’t think Kamala is in charge. The only thing I know of Kamala being in charge of the southern border,” Comer joked.
An Axios story early this month named those top White House staffers as helping to “create a cocoon” around Biden.
“Some Biden aides believe those closest to the president have created a cocoon around him that initially seemed earnestly protective, but now appears potentially deceptive in the debate’s aftermath,” Axios reported
. “They particularly focus on Deputy Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, the first lady’s top adviser Anthony Bernal, and longtime aide Ashley Williams, who joined the deputy chief of staff’s office when Tomasini ascended to the role earlier this year.”
The White House didn’t respond to multiple requests from The Daily Signal’s inquiry for this report by publication time. However, earlier this month, Ian Sams, a White House spokesman and senior adviser to the White House counsel’s office, issued statement after the initial subpoena
“Like everything Congressman Comer has done over the past year, these subpoenas are a baseless political stunt intended for him to get media attention instead of engage in legitimate oversight,” Sams said
in a public statement.
“His partisan attacks on the president have been discredited, and now he continues to debase the House by weaponizing subpoenas to get headlines instead of seeking information through the proper constitutional process,” Sams continued.
The legacy media largely has been complicit in trying to protect Biden from scrutiny over his mental faculties, Comer said.
“Joe Biden has been sick for a long time, and everyone knows, and when the media was trying to get him out of the race to put their hand-picked successor, Kamala, in the race, they admitted that he’s been sick for a long time,” the Kentucky Republican said. “I think a lot of the media knew he’s been sick for a long time, and they were part of the cover-up.”
With some hard work, pluck, the right boyfriend, and a bit of genetic luck, Vice President Kamala Harris
has found her way onto the presidential ballot without having to secure a single primary vote. Don’t tell me the American dream is dead.
Sure, Harris is a demagogue who speaks in cringy, swirling, impenetrable platitudes. And sure, according to President Joe Biden
, Harris was an identity hire. But “Morning Joe” says we’re not supposed to talk about any of that. So, let’s discuss her record and stated positions.
It seems like a lifetime ago that Biden named Harris his running mate. What you may not recall is that the media tried to gaslight us into believing the California senator was another apolitical dealmaker.
Former Clinton fixer George Stephanopoulos said Harris was “the middle-of-the-road, moderate wing of the Democratic Party.” The New York Times called her a “pragmatic moderate,” while The Associated Press focused on her “centrist record.” And so on.
A “small-c conservative,” one Washington Post columnist wrote.
The only problem was, according to GovTrack, Harris’ record in the Senate was to the left of red-diaper baby Bernie Sanders
. She was least likely of any senator to join in any bipartisan bills.
That’s fine. Bipartisan bills are the pits. Harris wasn’t handed a Senate seat by her former beau and California political kingpin Willie Brown
to waste her time legislating with a bunch of pinheads. She was there to run for the presidency. In her truncated first term, few excelled more at smearing their political opponents.
Remember when Harris moderately accused Brett Kavanaugh
of gang rape?
This false perception of moderation stems from Harris’ time as prosecutor and attorney general. Harris liked to brag about using “a huge stick” as a prosecutor in San Francisco, where she regularly threatened poor parents with jail time in her efforts to craft social policy—which wasn’t her job.
It’s true that Harris threw a lot of people in jail to bolster her political fortunes. Some of them likely innocent. And judging from her disposition, she would throw a lot more people into jail, if she could.
When pro-life journalist David Daleiden published videos of Planned Parenthood executives nonchalantly discussing the selling of body parts, Harris had his home raided, seized evidence, and then tried to throw him in prison. She later teamed up with the abortion mill to write legislation that would squash the free speech rights of other pro-lifers.
Like any good authoritarian, Harris enforces whatever laws she sees fit to enforce whenever she sees fit. One of the reasons Harris allegedly opposed the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was that the judge “consistently valued narrow legalisms”—which is to say, respected the Constitution—”over real lives.”
Harris was never one for legalism. When candidate Biden argued that Harris’ promise to issue an executive order unilaterally banning access to certain guns would be unconstitutional, she retorted: “I would just say: Hey, Joe, instead of saying ‘No, we can’t,’ let’s say, ‘Yes, we can,’” before cackling at the very notion that presidents couldn’t do whatever they wanted.
As a national candidate, Harris said she believed immigration laws should be treated as civil, rather than criminal, offenses. As a candidate, Harris supported abolishing private health insurance—”Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” she told CNN. In addition to nationalizing health care and education, Harris wants the government to control the manufacturing sector, the auto industry, food … and any industry that emits carbon.
Harris was in favor of getting rid of the filibuster to overturn state voting laws, nationalizing abortion on demand until birth, and passing the Green New Deal—an authoritarian takeover of the economy written by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., which would ban all fossil fuels, force Americans to retrofit every building in the country, eliminate air travel and meat, and create government-guaranteed jobs, among many other authoritarian measures.
On foreign policy, we don’t really know, though we can guess. This week, Harris wouldn’t even greet Benjamin Netanyahu
, the prime minister of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. She didn’t sit behind him during his speech to Congress.
A few weeks ago, the same Harris said antisemitic, pro-Hamas campus protesters showed “exactly what the human emotion should be.” In the past, she has openly protested with Islamic Republic propagandists from the National Iranian American Council. To be fair, in some ways her disposition comports more with the latter than the former.
When I say Harris is an authoritarian, I’m not contending she’s Hitler. I am saying she is a fan of obedience to authority, especially of Democrat-run government, at the expense of personal freedom in ways that are deeply un-American. That’s a bad trend in politics, in general, but it’s difficult to think of many politicians more wedded to the idea than Kamala Harris.
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Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician with direct knowledge of Donald Trump’s wounded right ear, disputes FBI Director Christopher Wray
‘s questioning of whether a bullet struck the former president in the assassination attempt.
Wray said that “there’s some question” whether Trump got hit by “a bullet or shrapnel” during the July 13 assassination attempt
in testimony Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s investigation of the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Jackson released a statement Friday saying there is “absolutely no evidence” anything other than a bullet injured Trump’s upper right ear
.
“During the Congressional Hearing two days ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested that it could be a bullet, shrapnel, or glass,” Jackson wrote. “There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet. Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself. Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
Jackson said he has treated many gunshot wounds throughout his 20-year career as an emergency medicine physician in the Navy and as a combat physician in Iraq.
He wrote that he can “completely concur” with the initial assessment and treatment provided to Trump at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for a gunshot wound to the ear.
Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee
that Trump’s would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, used a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle with a collapsible stock during the shooting. Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, exited the rally with blood dripping down his face.
“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear,” Wray testified Wednesday. “As I sit here right now, I don’t know if that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, also could have landed somewhere else.”
A photograph taken during the shooting by The New York Times’ Doug Mills shows a bullet flying directly by the right side of Trump’s head just moments before he began bleeding.
Crooks fired eight rounds, killing former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore and wounding two other rally attendees, authorities said. The gunman climbed onto the roof of a building unoccupied by authorities and 130 feet away from the rally stage.
The Secret Service and the FBI
told lawmakers Wednesday that authorities noticed Crooks approximately 50 minutes before Trump came onstage. One source told senators that Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder, while others said they saw him standing on the rooftop with a firearm about 20 minutes before bullets were fired.
Bipartisan questions about how the incident occurred led former Secret Service
Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign from the agency Tuesday following a tense hearing Monday before the House Oversight Committee.
Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and ranking member Jamie Raskin,D-Md., issued a joint statement Monday following the hearing calling for Cheatle’s resignation and stating that she “failed to provide answers” about the “stunning operational failure” during the rally.
MSNBC’s Michael Steele and Ari Melber both raised questions about the details of Trump’s wounded ear. Steele said July 16 that “a lot of questions” surround Trump’s injury, while Melber suggested the bandage on the ear was a “political quest” to gain sympathy and clout.
In a July 17 post on Threads, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid suggested that flying glass may have injured Trump.
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician with direct knowledge of Donald Trump’s wounded right ear, disputes FBI Director Christopher Wray
‘s questioning of whether a bullet struck the former president in the assassination attempt.
Wray said that “there’s some question” whether Trump got hit by “a bullet or shrapnel” during the July 13 assassination attempt
in testimony Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s investigation of the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Jackson released a statement Friday saying there is “absolutely no evidence” anything other than a bullet injured Trump’s upper right ear
.
“During the Congressional Hearing two days ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray suggested that it could be a bullet, shrapnel, or glass,” Jackson wrote. “There is absolutely no evidence that it was anything other than a bullet. Congress should correct the record as confirmed by both the hospital and myself. Director Wray is wrong and inappropriate to suggest anything else.”
Jackson said he has treated many gunshot wounds throughout his 20-year career as an emergency medicine physician in the Navy and as a combat physician in Iraq.
He wrote that he can “completely concur” with the initial assessment and treatment provided to Trump at Butler Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for a gunshot wound to the ear.
Wray testified to the House Judiciary Committee
that Trump’s would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, used a semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle with a collapsible stock during the shooting. Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, exited the rally with blood dripping down his face.
“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear,” Wray testified Wednesday. “As I sit here right now, I don’t know if that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, also could have landed somewhere else.”
A photograph taken during the shooting by The New York Times’ Doug Mills shows a bullet flying directly by the right side of Trump’s head just moments before he began bleeding.
Crooks fired eight rounds, killing former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore and wounding two other rally attendees, authorities said. The gunman climbed onto the roof of a building unoccupied by authorities and 130 feet away from the rally stage.
The Secret Service and the FBI
told lawmakers Wednesday that authorities noticed Crooks approximately 50 minutes before Trump came onstage. One source told senators that Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder, while others said they saw him standing on the rooftop with a firearm about 20 minutes before bullets were fired.
Bipartisan questions about how the incident occurred led former Secret Service
Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign from the agency Tuesday following a tense hearing Monday before the House Oversight Committee.
Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and ranking member Jamie Raskin,D-Md., issued a joint statement Monday following the hearing calling for Cheatle’s resignation and stating that she “failed to provide answers” about the “stunning operational failure” during the rally.
MSNBC’s Michael Steele and Ari Melber both raised questions about the details of Trump’s wounded ear. Steele said July 16 that “a lot of questions” surround Trump’s injury, while Melber suggested the bandage on the ear was a “political quest” to gain sympathy and clout.
In a July 17 post on Threads, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid suggested that flying glass may have injured Trump.
The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Democratic Party
ruling class’ bloodless coup of their own democratically elected presidential nominee, who also happens to be the nominal sitting president of the United States, is one of the most astonishing political developments of my lifetime.
Joe Biden, though clearly physically and mentally impaired, has sought the presidency for quite literally longer than I have been alive. Biden had been defiant ever since the June 27 presidential debate debacle that he was not going anywhere, despite overwhelming pressure from party elites and sycophantic media lap dogs demanding he do precisely that. He has a Lady Macbeth-like wife who craves power and he has a felonious son in desperate need of a presidential pardon.
Yet the coup succeeded. Biden became
the first incumbent president to not seek reelection after his first term since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968.
Biden made the much-anticipated announcement not with a solemn Oval Office address—that came three days later, and he didn’t even explain his decision. Rather, he issued a bedridden tweet—from a personal, not even official, account.
It’s the equivalent of divorcing your wife over text message. As if that weren’t crazy enough, the announcement came smack in the middle of a five-day period in which Biden was not publicly seen, and during which he apparently experienced an unspecified medical emergency. Suspicious much?
The Democrats’ decision to coup their own president is a curious one on the political merits.
Hold aside the galling hypocrisy of the purported party of “democracy” trying to remove former President Donald Trump
from the ballot under an outlandish constitutional theory while simultaneously attempting to bankrupt, prosecute, and incarcerate him on equally spurious grounds.
Hold aside the self-proclaimed party of “democracy” feigning ignorance over how its overheated rhetoric laid the seeds for their political opponent’s recent near-assassination and its continuing to depict that opponent as an existential threat to the American constitutional order.
And hold aside that purportedly “democratic” party deposing its own presumptive elected nominee—a stark reversal from its presidential primary, when party pooh-bahs worked hard to shut out all viable competition. Somewhere in Minnesota, Dean Phillips would like a word.
Hold all that aside. Because even on its own terms, the coup of Biden for cackler-in-chief Kamala Harris
is going to spectacularly backfire on the Democrats.
Already, Democrats and the corporate media have been working hard to “define” Harris for the American people. At times, this has included some rather dubious retconning, such as magically pretending she wasn’t the Biden administration’s appointed “border czar.” (She was.) But the even bigger problem for Democrats is that Harris is not an unknown commodity. On the contrary, she is a very well-known commodity—one who just happens to be about as popular with the American public as venereal disease.
Harris’ current average approval rating is under 38%, and an NBC News poll last June found her to be the single least popular vice president in American history—only 32% of Americans had a positive view of her, putting her 17 points underwater.
Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign was an absolute dud, self-imploding well before the first primary votes were cast. And as recently as a month or two ago, Democratic elites were openly discussing whether she could still be dropped as Biden’s 2024 running mate
. Funny how quickly one can go from weakest link to great savior of “Our Democracy.”
Practically, the path to winning 270 Electoral College votes still runs through the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It is frankly bizarre for Democrats to swap out the man who talks ceaselessly about his hardscrabble Scranton, Pennsylvania, upbringing for a Californian who boasts the most left-wing voting record of any presidential nominee in modern history.
Do Democrats really think Harris’ support for the Green New Deal and a national fracking ban will play well in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, or in the auto factories of Detroit? Will white working- and middle-class voters concerned about skyrocketing crime look favorably upon Harris’ enthusiastic support for the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, which racked up $2 billion worth of property damage?
It’s not that Uncle Joe, seemingly about to keel over and die at any moment, found himself in much better political shape. But in addition to the gross hypocrisy of their coup that has dealt yet another fatal blow to their specious claim to “defend democracy,” Democrats have also set themselves up for political failure. They would have been better off trying to limp across the finish line with their grievously wounded incumbent of a nominee rather than changing horses midrace.
The 14 million people who voted for Biden in the Democratic primaries ought to be livid. Rust Belt voters ought to be bemused. But Trump and running mate JD Vance ought to be ecstatic.
