By the end, when he was bubble-wrapped in 2024, he trusted only his family and his closest aides. And they protected him with a damaging chimera. Sugarcoated interpretations of polls that were not reflected elsewhere. Extreme efforts to redesign the presidency to adapt to his ever more fragile state. Trashing Robert Hur for telling the truth. Refusing to do the cognitive testing that might have established a diagnosis....Tapper and Thompson show how Biden and his inner circle created an alternate universe that they tried to sell to the media and the public — the sort of corrosive mirage of unreality that Trump excels at building....
Trump! How did Trump get into that metaphorical mishmash?
I do like this part, which names names:
It was not just Joe and Jill who wanted to hang on to power, with all the perks and trips and, for Jill, glamorous Vogue covers. It was also their advisers, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain and Annie Tomasini. The “palace guard,” as Chuck Schumer derisively dubbed top Biden advisers, slid from sycophancy to solipsism. The more Biden was out of it, the more his hours and responsibilities were curtailed, the more of a vacuum there was at the top, the more power the advisers had...
They bubble-wrapped the President, put him in a mirage in an alternate universe, and set up a chimera to do whatever it is chimeras do. So they fooled him and they also fooled us, they being Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain and Annie Tomasini... and who else? Where was Maureen Dowd and the rest of the press — among the foolers or the fooled? And she's saying Joe Biden is a tragedy? Too many fools. Too many villains. It's a comedy.
Instead of "The Tragedy of Biden," write a column titled "The Comedy of Biden." Use Shakespeare as your model of tragedy and comedy and tell me why we, the audience — we the People — experience Trump as Falstaff and — for all his faults — love him.
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105 comments:
Who is this us? I wasn't fooled by Biden of his handlers. He has been a lying corrupt fool for his entire adult life. Anyone who was fooled is as big a fool as Biden and company.
It's hilarious watching the media blaming everybody but themselves for the lies they told us for years.
The newspapers all went along for the ride.
Those around Biden thought that they could model his second term on Reagan’s second. After all, Reagan was famously shielded his whole eight years from the press, and like Biden, his cognitive decline was evident.
Somehow Mayorkas, not elected to anything, was free to do whatever he wanted and fuck up the country. Tapper, the professional and ethical journalist, kept saying: don't look over there, look over here.
Ya can't hate them enough.
The “palace guard,” as Chuck Schumer derisively dubbed top Biden advisers, slid from sycophancy to solipsism.
No sliding involved - it was a full-on embrace. And gee, Chuck, if you saw it that way, why didn't you say something? Goodness knows you are generally willing to trample anyone who stands between you and a microphone.
The only Donk politician willing to say something was Dean Phillips, a backbencher from the Twin Cities gentry suburbs whose family got rich selling cut-rate booze to America. When the scion of a poison peddler is your only truthteller, it's a bad place to be.
“Those around Biden thought that they could model his second term on Reagan’s second. After all, Reagan was famously shielded his whole eight years from the press, and like Biden, his cognitive decline was evident”
This is such BS.
When exposed, Democrats main defense is - look Republicans do it too. All lies. Reagan had zero cognitive decline. He, along with Thatcher and Pope John Paul defeated the Soviet Empire. He was a great man.
All the reporters and epoch writers are scurrying to get out from underneath the still falling debris of Biden's Hindenburg Presidency. Truly a Shakespearean tale of dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
Reagan had zero cognitive decline?
How deludedly partisan can you be to write something like that?
Of course Trump is worse. Because they have no policies that people actually want, if the Democrats had to run on their policies. Flooding the country with cheap labor, driving up rents, banning gasoline powered cars though inflationary spending, endless warfare overseas while exporting our industrial base across the Pacific, etc, etc, etc. None of it sounds very good, so "Trump is worse" is all they have.
"Too many fools. Too many villains."
You can fall in love with the power and the place as easily and completely as you can foolishly chase after love.
Fools Rush In - Ricky Nelson
I give some credit to the mumpsimus army for maintaining the mirage for as long as it did. The commentariat here who saw the obvious years prior was being mocked as late as biden’s last state of the union for their political fantasies. The mocking was originating from high in the upper right of the education/gullible matrix, just below anything out of Paul Krugman’s mouth and next to Larry Summers tongue bath of Hillary’s economic platform of price fixing…
"among the foolers or the fooled?"
That's always the question, isn't it.
A comic version of MacBeth. It might just work!
CYA on a massive scale. I am enjoying them throwing Biden under the bus because Biden is a piece of shit who deserves it. Biden is a retarded idiot so he counters with the sympathy prostate cancer card with the most obvious timing. They all come out of this smelling like shit - Biden family, the Democrats, and the press. The shit trifecta. Fuck them all and their cheap fakes.
Being protected with a damaging chimera is exactly the same thing as wearing the Shirt of Nessus except it's not.
"...an alternate universe that they tried to sell to the media and the public..."
They tried to sell it to the public. They didn't try to sell it to the media, they asked the media to help them try to sell it to the public. And the media obliged.
Sure, Maureen. Those bad people in the President's inner circle. And we all remember you using your high-visibility press platform to raise the alarm bells while this was happening. Right?
Dowd is happy to take the slings and arrows, because it continues to lead to outrageous fortunes. Further, She can continue the pretense of being noble. To not be is a losers game. And when exposed they’ll exclaim, hate the game not the gamer.
In a tragedy you die at the end, in a comedy you get married.
I don’t think Dowd knows what a chimera is. She is a blithering idiot partisan hack willing to deflect blame. The ‘we just reported what we were told’ line is a fucking joke. Do some investigating assholes, that is what reporters do. They don’t merely take what they are told at face value unless they are what they are, merely mouthpieces of the democrats.
Dowd evidently thinks the Biden Crime Family were lucky amateurs at this chimera building while Trump is a professional.
Nobody was fooled anywhere. It was an entertainment choice, which fiction you wanted to read, and supply and demand. It's a business.
The fiction of news doesn't depend on right or left. The fiction of news is that they know what your concerns should be and what is important. In general, they organize anxieties for you.
Biden was and is Senile — capital “S” — which is why they hid him in the basement in 2020. I’m sick of the “cognitive decline” and “decreased mental acuity” euphemisms, redolent with civility bullshit.
We should be drowning in the flood of the Mea Culpas but we’re instead protecting our soft tissues from all the pointy fingers originating from the bony fists of the guilty…
“Use Shakespeare as your model of tragedy and comedy and tell me why we, the audience—we the People—experience Trump as Falstaff—and for all his faults—love him.”
Of course, in genre terms, “Henry IV” is neither a tragedy nor a comedy. We love Falstaff’s folly because it reveals the vitality of the hero to be, the future Henry V. Falstaff unchecked would be meaningless chaos. Falstaff ruled by Prince Hal lets us laugh not only at the Fat Knight’s grotesqueries but at the pretensions of his betters. If we laugh, though, it’s because we secretly believe ourselves safe from chaos: eventually, somehow, we will return to the real problems of the real world. You can’t have the comedy of Falstaff without its conclusion: “I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers. / How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester. / I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, / So surfeit-swelled, so old, and so profane; / But being awaked, I do despise my dream.”
The problem with your analysis, rh, is that you think that the profits from the entertainment business arise from the business itself, when the business model is based on providing favors to powerful men, in return for favors far more lucrative than any profits they could make, for example, from a TV show.
Kevin Spacey's character in House of Cards said "If given a choice between money and power, always choose power."
@Once written twice . . .
Instead of throwing mud at heroes, fix your Democrat party. Find decent Democrat candidates, have a primary where your members can democratically choose your candidate and then defend your candidate instead of always trying to tear down your opponent.
How did Jake-the-Snake Sullivan stay off the list? Do we get to include Susan Rice, who used the US Agency for International Development to dole out money to American recipients?
To paraphrase the old Minnesota Vikings coach, Dennis Green: "He is who we thought he was."
Any random 13 year old on the street could have told any of our esteemed talking heads, our experts, our media, our academics, our rock stars and Hollywood stars that Joe Biden was off. That he was not right. That he was just a doddering old man.
This play has been going on since 2019 in front of the American public and the world. The cancer is only the latest act in the play. The media are like a person who tells a lot of lies. And they have to tell more lies to cover for the previous lies. And this goes on until even they get confused as to where the truth dropped off and the lies began.
They don't even know what's real anymore. Too bad they don't interview more random 13 year olds on the street.
I agree this isn’t being done for entertainment value. The media are pushing their preferred political agendas.
The Times was deeply enabling of the three biggest political scandals--all intertwined--of the past 100 years: Russiagate, Lawfare, the Biden Senility Cover-up. To this day there has been no introspection, no regret. If given the chance they would act the same way again.
This is understandable. I have many friends who are eager consumer of what the Times sells; Trump is so awful it is excused in the name of a righteous cause.
"...an alternate universe that they tried to sell to the media and the public..."
Tried? Everyone working for the Sulzbergers bought the lies, especially Maureen Dowd, who bought them wholesale and shamelessly resold them to the garage-eaters who hate Trump.
I am currently reading Dante's Divine Comedy. His geography of Hell reserves the very lowest reaches for the fraudsters, deceivers and betrayers. These among the damned are cast below and are punished more severely than those who committed sins of theft or violence. This is because those who deceive and betray others damage public trust and the good order of their communities for personal gain of power or money, which , of all acts of fallen Man are most deserving of Divine wrath.
Although one can escape eternal punishment through the love and grace of God, the sinner must repent and amend his life. I'm not seeing a whole lot of repentance going on by any of the parties to this monumental betrayal of the public trust.
A chimera wrapped in bubbles inside a mirage — that’s positively Churchillian!
The Liberal Limits of The Twilight Fringe are a Progressive Condition in the hulls of capital and control squatters.
I think the fact that Dr Fauci greenlit the research that led to the creation of the COVID virus, and we have all been lied to about it, research which led to the untimely death of millions, is a bigger scandal.
I read MoDo's piece the other day and thought she had one really clever line.
Now, though, I can't remember what it was. It was a five-second wow rather than a three-day wow.
Once Written
Watch the first three minutes of Reagan's last press conference.
He doesn't appear to be either shielded from the press or suffering from cognitive decline.
Not that I expect you to admit that.
I’m with Althouse. It’s a dark comedy just like all the references to Weekend at Bernie’s implied. To be a tragedy a production needs an heroic or at least a sympathetic character with whom the audience can identify or sympathize. The previous administration was a rogues gallery of Machiavellian creeps.
It’s nothing but lies and more lying about the lies they lied about before. They are all in on it. Dowd knows it and she knows it’s past time that she tried to distance herself from the nation’s largest political scandal as far as she can. So she lies to herself and anyone still reading her hog slop.
Amazing so Dowd has dropped the "Comedy" and the "Satire" and now is full of tears over the Sad, pathetic, tragedy of Joe Biden.
Of course, while we know the group of people who were controlling Biden, we don't know the key persons. The one or two people who were the real power behind the throne. You can be sure Dr. Jill was reviewing and approving everything. My guess is the other person was the Chief-of-staff.
BTW, this has happened before. FDR was a part time POTUS in his dying year. Sometimes he'd go on a trip and leave Harry Hopkins in charge. When in DC, he'd rely on his daughter and son-in-law and his aide Judge Roseman and Morgenthau. Of course, Stimson, Marshall, and Forrestahl were more or less left alone to fight the war.
Well said, Eva Marie @7:17am!
What would have happened if "Kam" had won? Chances are we'd know none of this. And Dowd and others would be writing off any talk of "Non-functioning POTUS Biden" as Republican Conspiracy Theories.
Correct label for the MSM: Lying liars who lie.
Well, at least Althouse is asking a real human being, Maureen Dowd -- not AI -- to write a comedy in the Shakespearean mode. Unfortunately, while Dowd's not artificial, she's also not intelligent.
It's time for the Progressive media to stand in front of a mirror and ask their very favorite question: "What did you know, and when did you know it?"
The only tragedy of Joe Biden I know about isn't about Joe at all, it's the one the isn't going to happen: We got four cheated years of malfeasance and a leadership style hell-bent on cultural destruction, leaving a trail of slime going out of office and no real comeuppance.
Once Written
Watch the first three minutes of Reagan's last press conference. He doesn't appear to be either shielded from the press or suffering from cognitive decline.
Not that I expect you to admit that
Duty, it’s nice of you to offer but really it’s up to those asserting a Reagan decline to show us the proof he was anything like Biden. The Left loves their mythology but they never have facts to back it up. That’s why the column in question tries so hard to convince us of things our eyes and experiences informed us are not true.
I like Dowd’s use of chimera here. One definition is: “a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.” Problem is her writing makes it seem something done TO Joe. THEY did all these things. Joe has always been comfortable with lying and with others lying on his behalf. Look at his history. Lies everywhere. They succeeded in 2020. Why not 2024? Because they couldn’t hide him the same way. Maureen knew as well as anyone. She trades in DC gossip. They all knew. That town is mostly gossip. You think they spend their time talking policy? No. They trade in gossip.
Hubris just announced his upcoming meeting with Nemesis. Classic Greek tragedy rather than Shakespeare.
Joe Biden was never the elected President. Ever. He did not win the election. The election was rigged. And the people who were controlling our country were stealing it blind. They stole trillions of tax dollars. That crime is ongoing and the Republicans are doing nothing to solve that crime.
Republicans are helping Democrats cover up that crime.
Dowd helped uncover Biden's plagiarism, for reasons, then 20 years later she forgot about that,
yes Musk has found the receipts, the possums are unwilling to act,
Cockroaches caught in the middle of the kitchen floor when the light is turned on frantically diving for cover.
My brain keeps substituting "Ben Hur" for "Robert Hur" and it's getting annoying.
https://substack.com/@alexepstein/note/p-163871253
Also, rather than Shakespeare, I'm reminded of Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite
what we're not talking about, when he dawdle over shambling,
This all sounds very dramatic in Dowd's telling, but it all boils down to factional infighting in the Dem Party. The naming of names seems to indicate one faction has finally gotten the upper hand.
Aren't those all Obama people? What does that tell us?
The whole Biden thing is reminiscent of the recent movie, The Death of Stalin. A black comedy but unfortunately not a very good one.
Ann asked…
“How did Trump get into that metaphorical mishmash?”
Metaphorical mishmash, or slop?
there's also Andrew Marr's Head of State, if you want a British sorbet,
I have said this ever since Biden lurched onto the stage as the basemented savior of the Democrat Party in 2020: throughout his career Biden has been stupid, empty, and vicious.
Nothing changed.
“Correct label for the MSM: Lying liars who lie.“
The MSM lies for a lot of money. There is a lot of evidence from DOGE’s and other people’s efforts that they were paid by NGOs funded by US taxpayers. Don’t forget why they lie so flagrantly. It’s not all out of good will toward Dems. They take our money and screw us. Those payments must stop.
Trump's job as President is to strangle a rabid coyote while under attack by a swarm of angry bees.
To many of us it was plain to see that Biden was not up to the job of POTUS during the run up to 2020. You’ll never convince me that the election was legit after election laws were violated nationwide due to liberty crushing plandemic tyranny.
Ten years ago was ten years after the NYT should’ve handed MoDo her gold watch and let her go. She’s become like the old pair of jeans Cat Stevens talked about—“and the patches make the goodbye harder still.”
Your last sentence sparks an idea: Do a play in Shakespear style on this affair.
If Dowd was fooled why are we reading the musings of a fool?
Strange that so many here saw through the deceit years ago (resident Lefties excluded of course) while our best and brightest in the intelligentsia didn’t.
At least they claim they didn’t.
RCOCEAN II said...
What would have happened if "Kam" had won? Chances are we'd know none of this. And Dowd and others would be writing off any talk of "Non-functioning POTUS Biden" as Republican Conspiracy Theories.
If Kamala had won they would be throwing people in jail for talking about it.
I think there is a historic movie to be made about Biden (The Emperor's New Clothes) and call it "Downfall." There are many similarities between the last days of the Third Reich and the delusional propaganda presented.
Trump as Falstaff fed into Grok - great fun. Excerpt:
A Scene: Trump as Falstaff in Henry IV
Imagine Trump recast in a scene from Henry IV, Part 1, say, the tavern scene where Falstaff boasts of fighting robbers. Here’s a reimagining:
Setting: The Boar’s Head Tavern, renamed “Trump’s Tremendous Tavern.” Torches flicker, ale flows, and a crowd of rowdy supporters chants. Enter Sir Donald of Fifth Avenue, clad in gaudy armor with a red cap bearing “Make England Great Again.”
Sir Donald (slamming a goblet down): “Listen, folks, I fought eleven bandits on Gad’s Hill—tremendous fight, nobody does battles better. They came at me, swords flashing, but I was unbelievable, a warrior like you’ve never seen!”
Prince Hal (smirking): “What, thou alone against eleven? Last night thou said two.”
Sir Donald: “Fake news, Hal! I said eleven, always eleven. The bards are lying, terrible people. But I was fantastic—huge victory, the best. Ask Peto, ask Bardolph, they’ll tell you!”
Poins: “We found thee hiding in a ditch, claiming ‘strategic retreat.’”
Sir Donald (waving a hand): “Strategy, Poins! The art of the deal! I saved my tremendous self for bigger battles. You’ll see, when I’m king’s counsel, we’ll build a wall ’round England—yuge, beautiful wall, and France will pay for it!”
The crowd roars, half-mocking, half-adoring, as Sir Donald calls for more sack and a “tremendous feast.”
Breezy said...
“Correct label for the MSM: Lying liars who lie.“
The MSM lies for a lot of money. There is a lot of evidence from DOGE’s and other people’s efforts that they were paid by NGOs funded by US taxpayers. Don’t forget why they lie so flagrantly. It’s not all out of good will toward Dems. They take our money and screw us. Those payments must stop.
Everyone needs to internalize this truth.
The media is a part of the Illegitimate Biden Regime. They were paid US Taxpayer dollars to spread Regime propaganda including lying about the health of the puppet they were using to get that taxpayer money.
In an ideal world, nobody would notice whether the president was old or sick. We would go so long between hearing from the President that people would speculate that he was dead until he popped up to resolve some momentary crisis and then faded back into the obscurity of supervising the executive branch with quiet and uncontroversial competence.
Biden's term was the chimera, the mirage and Obama the bubble-wrapped President in an alternate universe.
But I think the Dem Party leaders have decided Obama's 3rd term wasn't such a great idea after all. That in fact, it sucked. They don't want to do that some more.
Their problem now is finding someone who doesn't suck. They purged all the people who don't suck a long time ago.
"Once written, twice... said...
Reagan had zero cognitive decline?
How deludedly partisan can you be to write something like that?"
Reagan's cognitive decline was mild compared to Biden's AND it was actively pushed by MSM. Stories about him falling asleep and forgetting events were widely reported and Art Buchwald wrote a book satirizing him.
At the time, Reagan was in his early 70s, and although critics speculated about his mental sharpness, Alzheimer’s disease would not be diagnosed until 1994, five years after he left office.
There is magnitude order in the difference. There certainly was not any push back by the Media claiming Reagan was "sharp as a tack " and "if you can't handle the truth, FU!"
" The media are like a person who tells a lot of lies."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLRKhdQnd-k
What Achilles said.
What the Democrats and leftmediaswine permitted to happen to the country during the Biden “Presidency” was unforgivable. It is not rendered more forgivable by the “but Trump” bullshit. We will never recover. Not ever!
When you live in a bubble, it's hard to see what everyone outside the bubble sees. Dowd lives in a bubble.
So, in an earlier thread I expressed my expectation that no one would come forward to name names, and it seems I was wrong (though I think we still don't know who was the honcho and/or how the cabal made decisions when members disagreed) - which means that my powers of prognostication are just as finely tuned as they've ever been. This is the best Fortune Teller Jamie - sharp as a tack!
“Instead of "The Tragedy of Biden," write a column titled "The Comedy of Biden." Use Shakespeare as your model of tragedy and comedy and tell me why we, the audience — we the People — experience Trump as Falstaff and — for all his faults — love him.”
What, no link to Grok’s response?
I don't think Biden rises to the level of tragedy. He starts a progress or swells a scene or two, but he was never meant to be the central figure. He's more like Polonius. Polonius comes to a bad end, but it's the result of other people's schemes and bad choices.. He's a secondary character whose occasional sagacity only highlights his befuddlement and sententiousness.......He's not in his right mind, but he not's a Lear. He doesn't try to out howl the storm. He doesn't rage against the closing of the light, but rather shuffles off into it..
"Playgoers, I bid you welcome. The theater is a temple and we are here to worship the gods of comedy and tragedy."
Everyone needs to internalize this truth.
The media is a part of the Illegitimate Biden Regime. They were paid US Taxpayer dollars to spread Regime propaganda including lying about the health of the puppet they were using to get that taxpayer money.
The entire Democrat Party and many institutions in its orbit are a criminal racket that exists only to loot our pockets and use the money for their own partisan political gain and personal enrichment.
Civil War II is coming. After it is won, we must take bold, unprecedented, history-making steps to punish them and set up a new Constitutional order that will ensure that no organization like it can ever again foul our polity.
The entire Democrat Party and many institutions in its orbit are a criminal racket that exists only to loot our pockets and use the money for their own partisan political gain and personal enrichment.
...have you seen any details of the latest House spending bill?
"I don't think Biden rises to the level of tragedy"
Exactly right.
I have definitely revised my opinions on Reagan's policies over the years, I am a lot less admiring of his economic policies, but I still like the way he handled the Soviet Union, but I don't remember any time, and when he was first elected, I hated him, then came to really like him, I don't remember him seeming senile, ever, while in office.
A lot of people assume that nobody could possibly disagree with them for honest reasons, and so look for other explanations, anything but "Is it possible that I am wrong?" so anytime somebody disagrees with them, that person must have some kind of evil intent or cognitive issue. Because these people assume, as a matter of course, that their understanding of the world is perfect.
The legacy media (including Dowd and her fellow co-conspirators at the NYT) assisted the palace guard in perpetrating a fraud on the American people. Now that the fraud has been exposed, she and her media co-conspirators are shocked, shocked at the extent of the fraud. What a sick joke.
Here I thought no one could despise Joe Biden mordd eff than I do, but then I read “Rest in Piss.” Wow. You keep it classy, lefties.
Looks like the verminous troll Once Written is back. Early parole?
After all, Reagan was famously shielded his whole eight years from the press ...
Stupidest thing I'll read all week. And it's only Tuesday.
YouTube is full of videos of Reagan's press conferences, ones like this:
"President Reagan's 44th Press Conference on December 8, 1988"
44th... and he had two years to go. Compare to Biden.
BarrySanders20 said...
Trump as Falstaff fed into Grok - great fun. Excerpt:
Poins: “We found thee hiding in a ditch, claiming ‘strategic retreat.’”
Sir Donald (waving a hand): “Strategy, Poins! The art of the deal! I saved my tremendous self for bigger battles.
5/20/25, 9:49 AM
Really? I'm gonna ruin your day by pointing out that not did President Trump survive your buddies trying to kill him, his iconic defiance has already become a part of American history. I don't think you're going to look half as heroic when someone lands a bullet in your skull.
The difference between Trump and Biden, as "heroes" is that Trump almost certainly agonized as to whether he wanted to be President, you can picture him "refusing the call," like Shrek, at the beginning of the movie, or the real life Oliver Cromwell, on whom Shrek was based, but Joe Biden? He sought increasing political power from the age he first saw how lucrative it was hanging out with his organized crime friends who helped him get elected that first time.
I'm looking forward to "Macbiden," the dramatization of the events of last few years. But it's best to leave the writing up to humans.
Biden was "bubble-wrapped" in 2020. That's what the basement campaign was all about. If you were a White House reporter and had to submit questions to Biden in advance, wouldn't that indicate to you that Biden wasn't really as quick or as competent as other presidents? Wouldn't that lead you to wonder about his mental capacity? Apparently not. Biden got Trump, the big, frightening threat, out of the White House, and he was never that bright anyway, so the media just left the story alone and waited for the party hierarchy to eventually dump old Joe.
ChatGPT says:
The Comedy of Biden
By an American Spectator
If William Shakespeare were among us now — quill sharpened by cynicism, ear attuned to kings and clowns alike — he would find no shortage of material on the American stage. And what a stage it is: garish, gilded, exhausted. Center-left, President Joseph R. Biden ambles on, playing a role that seems to tire even him. Stage-right, enter Donald J. Trump — part Falstaff, part Richard III, wholly improbable — commanding both our laughter and our reluctant affection.
In Shakespeare’s world, comedy and tragedy are not merely genres but moral architectures. Tragedy is the domain of the noble undone by hubris; comedy, the realm of the mistaken, the mistaken-for, and the miraculously restored. If Biden is to be the figure of comedy, it is in the late-style sense: the confused, doddering duke whose return to power no one quite remembers voting for — a Prospero without magic, a Leontes who never repents, a Lear who forgot to divide the kingdom but still expects obedience.
His presidency unfolds like a comedy in which the mistaken identity — “steady hand,” “experienced statesman,” “return to normalcy” — has become the very plot. The joke, increasingly, is on us.
Yet the laughter is dry, and the joy absent. Biden’s America does not resemble the jubilant feasts of Much Ado or As You Like It, but the bureaucratic farce of Measure for Measure, where authority is wielded without vigor, and virtue is dictated by fiat. There is no Rosalind to charm us, no Benedick to win us over. Only policy briefings read with the rhythm of a sleepwalker and an administration that gestures at transformation but trips over its own feet.
And then — Falstaff.
Donald Trump is not, to be clear, a moral man. Neither was Falstaff. The old knight is a braggart, a glutton, a coward, a corruptor of youth. Yet Shakespeare makes him unforgettable, even lovable. Why?
Because Falstaff lives. He bursts through the frame of decorum. He mocks the solemnity of princes and the stiffness of courts. He is full of appetite and outrageous invention, capable of lies so transparent they become a form of truth. And crucially, he loves the audience. He plays to us. He includes us in the joke.
Trump, like Falstaff, is chaos cloaked in charisma. His sins are overt, his boasts operatic, his comebacks pure tavern theatre. But unlike Biden — who speaks to us from a script written long ago by handlers and party scribes — Trump speaks with us, or at least to that part of America that feels it has been cast out of the palace. He is vulgar. But he is also vividly real, and in this era of political theater, reality is the rarest of commodities.
Why do the people forgive Falstaff, even love him? Because he does not pretend to be more than he is. Because he mocks the moral pretensions of power while laying bare its indulgences. Because when the world grows dark with duty and war, Falstaff reminds us — as Trump does, in his own obscene way — that politics is also performance, that the state is also a stage.
And so, as the curtain falls on Act IV of this modern drama, we look upon our two players: Biden, the withering authority who would be king of a comedy but cannot recall the punchline, and Trump, the boisterous rogue whose every entrance turns a tragedy into farce.
We are the audience. We the People. And perhaps, like Prince Hal, we know we should one day reject Falstaff — but we’re not quite ready. Not yet. Because unlike the noble, tragic Biden, Falstaff makes us laugh. He sees us. He scandalizes and seduces us. And in the end, it is hard to turn away from the only man on stage who seems to know that this — all of this — is a kind of play.
Work release.
Here I thought no one could despise Joe Biden more than I do, but then I read “Rest in Piss.” Wow. You keep it classy, lefties.
Joe Biden made a questionable election win and then spent 4 years being the world's most powerful McGuffin.
I think Bob Boyd had a point above that bears exploring further.
Biden's mind was gone in 2019 and everyone knows it. He wasn't running things. Competing factions within the Democrat party were running things.
That's why there's so much buzz around Tapper's book. Two factions are being thrown under the bus: the Valerie Jarrett faction and the legacy media.
"Meps...meps...meps!"
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