"Former President Joe Biden lost his bid Monday to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with his longtime ghostwriter..."

"... that were used in special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s unlawful hoarding of classified information. A divided federal appeals court ruled the 46th president’s privacy claims did not outweigh the 'substantial' public interest in the material... The audio recordings of those interviews became part of Hur’s investigation, with the special counsel noting in his February 2024 report that Biden showed 'diminished faculties and faulty memory,' and described the conversations as 'painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events.'... Biden’s attorneys have argued the conversations with Zwonitzer were candid and always intended to stay private...."

The NY Post reports.

"You did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park."

Said Michelle Obama, as "Mr. Obama looked down and wiped away tears."

She's quoted in "Presidents Line Up for Obama’s Long-Awaited Center in Chicago/Thursday’s opening drew four former presidents, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Jennifer Hudson. Chicago has seen years of planning and legal fights" (NYT).

Biden was there too, bearing with unbearable sorrow:

"Politicians’ constant compulsion to blame the gap between policy victories and political support simply on poor communications, or worse, poor 'messaging,' is a bit too pat..."

"... both self-serving and self-exonerating. If only they knew about all the great things I’ve done! But Biden — who, by late in his term, 'had become among the most inaccessible presidents in modern history,' Timothy Naftali of Columbia University writes — did himself few favors on that front. 'He did not just fail to tout his achievements; he seldom even tried,' Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown, complains.... In her memoir, Jill Biden reimagines her husband’s communications struggles as something between a mistake and a virtue. 'While Joe was in office, I think he and I both erred on the side of silence, dignity and letting news cycles run their course,' she explains.... 'We were trying so hard to reassure everyone that we didn’t take the time to acknowledge that he looked very unwell in that debate, to say to the public: 'Yes. That was bad, no doubt.'"

Writes Carlos Lozada, in "The Verdict on Biden Is In" (NYT).

"President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate..."

"... allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration's 'weaponization' of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself."

ABC News reports.

Andy Dick and Bill Maher explain Biden to each other.

I like Dick's set up — "I don't know politics" — and then he does some nice physical comedy.

ADDED: This video has strong Man-in-Shorts content. I think the shorts work well for Dick. He's an odd little man, so shorts are fitting for him. He's not trying to convey the impression that he's A Man.

Kamala knows how to be President, because she "spent countless hours in my West Wing office, footsteps away from the Oval Office."

Here's Kamala Harris at the National Action Network conference, when Al Sharpton asked her if she's going to run for President again.

"Listen, I might [run again]. I'm thinking about it. Let me also say this. I served for four years being a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States. I spent countless hours in my West Wing office, footsteps away from the Oval Office. I spent countless hours in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room. I know what the job is. And I know what it requires...."

So she spent untold hours in a room near his room. But what was he even doing in his room? Weren't there other people in other rooms doing everything for him? So yeah, she knows what it takes, and she feels up to it, and, if that's the job, we're all up to it.

Bloviate.

From a biography of Warren G. Harding:

That was sent to me by my son Chris, who is quite far along toward his goal of reading a biography of every U.S. President. 

In the 22-year history of this blog, I've never used the word "bloviate." Twice, though, I've quoted someone else:

1. My November 1, 2019 post, "An impeachment trial would help Joe Biden — because Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Cory Booker would all face the obligation to do their job as Senator," quoted NY Magazine writer Ed Kilgore, who wrote:  "[An impeachment trial] could be a boon to non-senators — particularly Joe Biden, who can bloviate to his heart’s desire about the lessons he learned on impeachment and all the issues involving Trump during his 44 years as a member or presiding officer of the Upper Chamber...." 

2. On October 7, 2004, the first year of this blog, I quoted Al Franken, who was boasting about his radio show on the radio network Air America: "We do a different kind of show. I'm not the mirror image of Rush Limbaugh. I do a totally different kind of show. I don't bloviate for three hours and pull stuff out of my butt and mislead and lie. We're very scrupulous about our facts. I'm proud of that." (I do go on to quip about whether Franken "did in fact bloviate," so count that as my using the word if you must, but I'm really still essentially quoting him.)

In both of those instances, the user of "bloviate" is insulting someone else. President Harding, the popularizer of the word, used it about himself, self-deprecatingly. 

***

Here's the biography — commission earned — "Warren G. Harding: The American Presidents Series: The 29th President, 1921-1923." Warning: It's by John Dean. Chris says: "It’s part of a series of very short books that I use when the options are very limited." He's relied on that series to read about William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, and Benjamin Harrison.

"You have to have a federal government that can enforce laws."

Resurfaced video of Joe Biden being asked about sanctuary citiespic.twitter.com/e2SrFohLJD

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) January 8, 2026

A wan vision of failure.

From the front page of the New York Times.

Here's the article: "Biden Has Raised Little of What He Needs to Build a Presidential Library/His library foundation has told the I.R.S. that by the end of 2027 it expects to bring in just $11.3 million — not nearly enough for a traditional presidential library."

That article has 4 authors. 4 authors in search of a President.

ADDED: A few things from the article:

1. An excellent joke from a big donor named John Morgan:  “The Biden staff, they ruined any type of good library for him. He’ll be lucky to have a bookmobile.”

2. They might need to repurpose "pre-existing Biden institutions at the University of Delaware."

3. Bill Clinton is out there seeking donations for an expansion to his presidential library, and he's doing a better job of maintaining relationships with donors.

4. Obama's presidential library is ridiculous. It's a "still-unfinished 'presidential center' in Chicago — not technically a presidential library,' since it will not include hard copies of White House documents — will include a vegetable garden, a branch of the city library, and a basketball gym." Let me add on to that and say it suggests that Biden's best move should be to end to the grandiose bullshit that is the "presidential library"? 

"They’re trying to turn it into something scary, something sinister. But folks, it’s not really about anything that’s all that complicated."

"At its core, it’s about giving every American an opportunity to be treated with the basic decency, dignity and respect they all deserve."

Said ex-President Joe Biden, about transgender rights, quoted in "Biden Slams Republicans for Using L.G.B.T.Q. Identity as ‘Political Football’/The former president defended his support for transgender rights, a stance that has provoked second-guessing among some Democrats" (NYT).

So it's all very simple and anyone who says otherwise is sinister, and to boil it down to that isn't politicizing anything. It's the other side that's doing the politicizing, those bad people over there. 

I remember when Democrats liked to portray themselves as sophisticated, seeing all the complexity and nuance. Now, they're pushing the idea it's all quite simple. It's black and white. So... binary.

The top-rated comment over there is interesting. Jose writes:

"The White House has responded to questions over Mr. Trump’s use of A.I. imagery by suggesting it was part of his successful social media strategy."

"'No leader has used social media to communicate directly with the American people more creatively and effectively than President Trump,' Liz Huston, the White House’s assistant press secretary, said Friday in an emailed statement. Mr. Trump’s use of the technology has evolved alongside the tools, which have rapidly improved from producing obviously fake images in 2022 to more lifelike renderings — including video and audio — this year."

From "How Trump Is Using Fake Imagery to Attack Enemies and Rouse Supporters" (NYT)(free-access video, because there are so many embedded videos to peruse).

Once there were fantastic political cartoons. Now, the graphic humor is AI slop. What can you do but hope your side produces cooler, funnier, more compulsively sharable material than your opponents? The NYT may deplore what Trump is sharing, but I suspect they mostly wish Democrats had better things to share. I think they pine for the glory days of Dark Brandon.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joe Biden (@joebiden)

"Donald Trump was maliciously prosecuted repeatedly—from the New York state level by Letitia James to the federal level by Jack Smith—over and over, on the basis of manipulated charges."

"These were stretched charges, charges that were literally read in unique ways for the first time in order to go after him. So should you be surprised that Donald Trump is now doing this to the people he believes targeted him in the first place? He promised this was going to happen. It’s not exactly a shock. It is the reality that these methods were used against him. Now, the thing about Trump that frustrates so many people on the left is that he’s not genteel about doing this sort of stuff. Joe Biden would lie."

Said Ben Shapiro on his podcast yesterday.

"Young women are constantly warned of the dangers of the manosphere.... The cult of 'toxic masculinity' is now so overcooked as to be limp..."

"... and meaningless, and, crucially, it entirely misses one key thing: feminine men can be just as 'toxic' as bodybuilders. It is Gen Z’s shallow sexual politics, which privilege 'looking' progressive over deeply felt values, that have landed us here. If the feminisation of culture has succeeded, it is because posing as effete gains men access to the women they want to sleep with. Cultural capital has deserted roided-up meatheads and landed in the lap of the moustachioed, mulletted lothario who professes to be a harmless feminist and who wields just enough knowledge about Judith Butler to talk a blushing sociology major into bed.... When visibly masculine men are maligned as potential abusers, women choose the wolf in vintage clothing. But this is all based on false assumptions: performative matcha is one more way that ill-intentioned loverboys can game our sexual politics’ daft stereotypes, joining tried-and-tested tactics like professing to be left-wing, painting one’s nails and listening to Phoebe Bridgers. You are just as likely to be shagged and bagged by a matcha drinker as a craft beer enthusiast, or indeed, a plain old lager fan...."

Writes Poppy Sowerby, quoted in "Ladies, if you see a man with a matcha latte — run/Male poseurs have abandoned macho and embraced matcha. Is it just another ploy to seduce women?" (London Times).

I haven't used my "performative (the word)" tag in a while. Here's the post where I created it, back in 2022 about a NYT piece titled, "Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise." I said:

"Biden’s post-presidency is already striking. His memoir sold for $10 million — a major sum, but tens of millions less than Barack Obama’s."

"At least one report has suggested he may be struggling to raise money for his presidential library, though a spokesperson described this characterization... as 'unfair.'... In official Washington, there is little... expression of appreciation for the former president. Biden still casts a long shadow over his party. In recent days, his former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had to answer for whether he said all he knew about Biden’s cognition in office. ('I told the truth, which is that he was old,' Buttigieg told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. 'You could see that he was old.') And had his former VP Kamala Harris actually run for California governor, the NYT noted, she would 'have faced difficult questions about how much she knew about President Biden’s decline and whether she participated in shielding his diminished health from the public.'...  Biden... has kept himself at a remove from the Oversight proceedings and the former aides who are testifying...."

From "Playbook: How Joe Biden is living" (Politico).

Quotes about the House Oversight proceedings from "two people familiar with Biden’s thinking":

"I made every decision," says Joe Biden, but how would he know, and how could his statement ease our doubts?

The NYT reports on its 10-minute interview with Biden and tells us that "Mr. Biden said that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, calling President Trump and other Republicans 'liars' for claiming his aides had used an autopen to do so without his authorization."

So he's using the word "liars" without knowing if people are lying. It makes me want to just call him a liar and be done with it. If the aides were using the autopen somewhere outside of his presence, how would he necessarily know what they were doing? He's saying trust me — trust me or else I'll call you a liar.

The article continues: "'I made every decision,' Mr. Biden said in a phone interview on Thursday, asserting that he had his staff use an autopen replicating his signature on the clemency warrants because 'we’re talking about a whole lot of people.'"

How does he know he made every decision? We're not liars if we simply doubt that he had the mental capacity to know what was going on. What sort of decision-making was it? Am I a liar if I presume he did nothing more than rubber-stamp whatever was recommended by the staff?

"When Donald Trump’s megabill passed the Senate, consummating nearly a half-year of aggressively reactionary policymaking by the 47th president, a colleague commented that 'it’s like the Biden presidency never happened.'"

"That’s true in the sense that between Trump’s executive orders and the megabill, it’s hard to find a single stone unmoved from where he found it when he took office in January. But on reflection, it might be quite literally true. The country, and even the Democratic Party, would very likely have been in better condition today had Trump been reelected in 2020 over Joe Biden...."

Writes Ed Kilgore, in "America Would Be Better Off If Trump Won in 2020" (Intelligencer).

How many of you are getting ready to comment: What do you mean if?!

Anyway... Kilgore plunges into his fantasy. Excerpt:

"Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides/The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office" (NYT).

Is there video of Joe Biden saying that on his own, perhaps sitting with a serious journalist who is permitted to probe with questions about specific actions taken under his name?

Oh, no! I see we're told it was "a statement"! His denial that things were done by others using his name is another thing that might have been done by others using his name!

Does that make me a conspiracy theorist — an outlandish conspiracy theorist — in the eyes of the New York Times?

I'm suspicious of Biden's denial, but that doesn't mean I support the new President investigating the previous President. But that's what Biden did to Trump. Or was that really Biden? I understand Trump's motive of revenge, but I wish he'd concentrate on achieving great things, not raking over the wrongs of the past. And yet I rankle at the accusation that one is a conspiracy theorist — an outlandish conspiracy theorist! — to believe that there were these wrongs in the past. 

In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge. The executive order came after Mr. Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, following a pattern of suggestions by the president and his allies that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides....

Some outlandish things are not outlandish, and some outlandish things are humor. Should a President use humor? Not to confuse people, but he doesn't need to eschew humor for the sake of those who are willfully blind to humor. In this case, the "robotic clone" expresses a justified doubt that the entity called Joe Biden was making his own decisions and exercising the power entrusted to him by the people.

By the way, even if we assume Biden said those words quoted in the post title and let's even add the assumption that he said them in all sincerity, the question remains: How could he know what decisions were made during his presidency? He says he "made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations." Which ones? All of them? Sit him down for a serious interview with someone who will ask him about particular decisions and see if he recognizes them! This is the man who asserted that he "beat Medicare." 

"Bono has stood by his decision to accept the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, despite admitting to 'looking like a plonker' as President Biden placed it around his neck."

"The U2 frontman, who recently celebrated his 65th birthday, has no regrets keeping the award that he received in January for his humanitarian work in spite of claims that he was morally wrong to do so due to the former president’s track record over Gaza."

From "Bono has no regrets about accepting White House honour/The U2 frontman addresses backlash over accepting the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his longstanding humanitarian work and collaboration with Joe Biden" (London Times).

According to the OED, "plonker" has meant "A foolish, inept, or contemptible person" since 1955. John Lennon muttered it on TV in 1964. "Plonker" also means "penis." Published examples go back to the 1920s: "Last night I lay in bed and pulled my plonker." I was amused to find that in the OED, but there it was. An older meaning of the word is "Something large or substantial of its kind." You can see how one thing leads to another.

"The book is a very, very harsh critique of Jill Biden and the first couple’s top aides....The book does not explore in much detail Kamala Harris’s role in the cover-up."

"If anything, it reveals how little Biden’s inner circle trusted or respected the former vice president — and how much she was insulated from the Oval Office as a result. According to Tapper and Thompson, she was seen by members of Biden’s inner circle as lazy and rude. 'Several quietly expressed buyer’s remorse,' they report, to the point where some believed he should have picked Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to serve as vice president instead...."

From "A Damning Portrait of Joe Biden’s Loyal Inner Circle" (National Review).

"Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board. I’ve never seen a situation like this before..."

"... with so few people having so much power. They would make huge economic decisions without calling [Treasury] secretary Yellen."

Said an unnamed member of Biden's Cabinet, quoted in "Meet the Biden 'politburo' accused of running the country in secret/There was the aide who demanded $4 million to advise the re-election campaign. There was the enforcer who 'cast out heretics.' And there was Jill Biden" (London Times).

The Five: Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Ron Klain, Bruce Reed, Anthony Bernal. Plus: Jill Biden, Hunter Biden.