What authenticity means these days.

1. "I am completely comfortable with having voted for Trump. It was my first time because of the apocalypse that was represented by the blue ticket. And so I just don't think there was any rational choice. We had an absolute emergency on our hands and this simple ability to vote for something that was in some way authentic made it the only game in town.... You know... President Biden was not the president in the meaningful sense.... And then at the point that that became implausible, to swap in an empty shirt is such a dire commentary on the state of the Republic" — said Bret Weinstein, in video at X.

2. "The beauty standards themselves are inauthentic — that is, unnatural and impossible to attain without surgical or technological intervention — but the open discussion around how to achieve them has been praised as a form of authenticity by fans, many of whom felt they had previously been gaslit by celebrities claiming their perfect forms were the result of diet and exercise.... Despite an expressed desire to be true to themselves, members of [Generation Z] have said they care less and less about authenticity from influencers — perhaps because the efforts to appear relatable have fallen flat" — from "An Era of Authenticity (or Something Like It)/Celebrities are being praised for openly discussing plastic surgery and Photoshop. Are they raging against a machine they created?" (NYT).

3. "Obviously, we’ve talked about authenticity, and if you watch Mamdani, he’s just electric, which [Kansas Governor Laura] Kelly is not. But they are authentically of their place"/"Her image in Kansas — she’s really leaned into the idea that she’s not a partisan figure. She grew up Republican. She is a moderate Democrat" — said Michelle Cottle, quoted in "There Is Hope for Democrats. Look to Kansas. Two Opinion writers on the Democratic governors who might just save the party" (NYT). 

4. "To say I know how our environment affects people? I have no idea. I really don't. And I don't want to know. I don't want it evaluated. I just want to keep trying to make the environment healthy and good and better — and authentic" — said Pat Murphy, manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, quoted in "MLB-leading Brewers cap best 60-game stretch in club history" (MLB.com).

"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":

"Biden aides look to Fifth Amendment as autopen probe widens/The former president’s allies are seeking legal protections amid fear that they have become the latest targets for political retribution."

Headline at The Washington Post. I'd make that a free-access link, but I only have 4 left to give this month and it's only the 18th. And it's one of these 31-day months, too, so I've got to be extra stingy.

I'll cherry-pick the lawprof talk:

“They have little options here in terms of protecting their interests,” said Jonathan Shaub, who teaches law at the University of Kentucky and has advised previous White Houses on the use of executive privilege. “Some have claimed the Fifth Amendment, even though I don’t think they actually think that they have committed any crimes. But given the language that has been used and the insinuations, I can understand why their counsel would say, ‘Just don’t say anything, because we don’t know what they’re willing to do and what they’re willing to prosecute.’”

You don't think they actually think that they have committed any crimes. But what do they need to believe? Is it enough that they believe that the current administration will do anything to get revenge on political adversaries? Professor Shaub can understand why their counsel would say they should plead the Fifth, but would he advise his clients to plead the Fifth based on the idea of not knowing what the Trump administration is willing to do?

"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." 

"Your post titled 'Is the news of Biden's advanced cancer news of a terrible scandal?' was flagged to us for review."

"We have determined that it violates our guidelines and deleted the post, previously at https://althouse.blogspot.com/2025/05/is-news-of-bidens-advance-cancer-news.html. Why was your blog post deleted? Your content has been evaluated according to our Hate Speech policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page... to learn more.... We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in termination of your blog."

So I got that email from Blogger this morning.

I'm following the review procedure, and I fully expect the post to be restored, but what jackassery! Was I "inciting hatred against" Joe Biden "on the basis of" his "disability"?!

I'd linked to something titled "This is the Most Dangerous Cover-up in the History of the Presidency...."

Is "the most dangerous cover-up" something that must be... covered up?

"But I think the meta text of why it was so shocking was all of the people that were waved off as conspiracy theorists. Right wing fever swamp people were completely right."

"Were a hundred percent right. They were completely right. And the people who, you know, even now, you know, you still hope they're telling the truth. Like maybe we can trust some of what they say they were this profoundly wrong. I think that is like the, the deeper layer of the shock."

Says Bari Weiss, somewhat babblingly. 

Jake Tapper, who has more reason to babble, speaks eloquently:

"I think there was a feeling — like, a lot of members of the Democratic Party that were seeing this or saw moments um of him seeming out of it — um that going public was not going to change [Biden's] mind."

"It was only going to help Donald Trump, um, and I think that's how a lot of them rationalized it. Now whether or not history will judge them, you know, as being right for doing that, um, you know, we will see, but this is also part of the reason why the White House was shielding him from as many people as possible including Cabinet secretaries because sometimes, you know, you see him once maybe it's just a bad day you can just say, like, you know, maybe I just had one bad meeting. You're not really sure..."

Said Alex Thompson, co-author of "Original Sin," on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday.

The interviewer, Shannon Bream, quotes from the book (on page 85): "[A longtime Biden aide said] 'He just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years — he'd only have to show proof of life every once in a while. His aides could pick up the slack." She asks: "Who would have been running the White House in a second Biden term?"

Thompson responds: "Well, this person went on to say that when you're voting for a President you're voting for the aides, uh, around him. But these aides were not even Senate-confirmed aides. These are White House aides. These were unelected people. And one of the things that really I think comes out in our reporting here is that if you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe — that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy you can rationalize anything including sometimes doing undemocratic things, which, I think, is what this person is talking about."

It's like fighting fire with fire — fighting the destruction of the democracy with the destruction of democracy. You had to destroy the village to save it. Noted. 

"The book has also amplified debate about whether more blame should be placed on Democratic leaders, Mr. Biden’s staff and the press for not revealing more about the former president earlier...."

"Intentionally or not, by being an author of a major book on the subject, Mr. Tapper has allowed himself to become a symbol of the establishment press that conservatives have long accused of hiding the former president’s frailty from the public. [Megyn] Kelly, the former Fox News star, subjected Mr. Tapper to intense grilling on her popular podcast in an interview that went viral online. 'You covered the Biden presidency aggressively throughout the four years, and you didn’t cover mental acuity, hardly at all,' Ms. Kelly said at one point. 'I mean, time and time again when issues came up, you seem to be running cover for the president.' Mr. Tapper denied the charges. 'Conservative media absolutely has every right to say, "We were hip to this, and the legacy media was not,"' he said later in the interview. 'Now, I do not accept that I was part of a cover-up. I do not accept that I was just providing cover for Joe Biden.'"

From "Everyone Now Has an Opinion on Jake Tapper/A book the CNN host co-wrote has received positive reviews and appears to be a sales hit. But it has also generated intense scrutiny of him and his work" (NYT).

So... you weren't "hip to this."

Why not? And why would I read a book written by such an out-of-touch, unobservant, slow learner? Or should I ask why would I read a book written by such a liar?

"After watching the whole course of the accident, the respected comrade Kim Jong-un made [a] stern assessment..."

"... saying that it was a serious accident and criminal act caused by absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism which is out of the bounds of possibility and could not be tolerated.... He warned solemnly that the irresponsible errors of the relevant officials… responsible for the accident that brought the dignity and self-respect of our state to a collapse in a moment would have to be dealt with."

So it said in The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the Workers’ Party of Korea, as quoted in "North Korea warship launch accident leaves Kim Jong-un furious/Supreme leader says the damage suffered by the 5,000-tonne naval vessel, which was launched sideways, was a disgrace to the country’s 'dignity and self-respect'" (London Times).

I'm perplexed by the degree of openness from the government and in the press in North Korea. Over here in America, I don't even know who was President in the last few years.

"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.

"How much empathy can the country muster for Biden? In both red states and blue ones? In the well-lit spaces on social media and in the darkest corners?"

"Among his supporters and those who voted for his rival? Biden doesn’t have the benefit of having been out of office for years. And while he has been on a redemption tour of sorts, only history can define his presidency. Nostalgia hasn’t had a chance to cast him in a warm glow. The scars of a political dogfight haven’t even begun to scab over. The old ones are still raw and weeping, even as the country accumulates new ones. Vice President JD Vance argued that it was possible to have two thoughts about Biden at once: to wish him good health while also, essentially, calling him a terrible president in the same breath."

Writes Robin Givhan, in "Biden was empath-in-chief. Can a divided country offer him empathy? In the face of Biden’s cancer diagnosis, does the country have the capacity for empathy despite the political rancor, distrust, alternative facts and lies?" (WaPo).

Shame on us for wanting to know the truth about what happened? Who was President these past few years? We're supposed to sink into a pool of respectful silence and not demand to know? We're not supposed to be skeptical about the timing of the cancer news, which seems so perfectly aimed to shut us up about Tapper's book and the Hur recordings?

And what is this "redemption tour of sorts"? I had not noticed. I had to ask A.I., which pointed me to his "paid speeches, interviews (e.g., his appearance on The View), and international trips (e.g., attending Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome)." He wasn't waiting for years to pass, wounds to heal, and nostalgia to set in. He and his enablers were doing positive propaganda. Why should we shut up? Answer: because he has an aggressive cancer. Of course, we feel the silencing power.

What ugly people we are to still want the truth! Who was President these past few years?!

A bubble-wrapped President protected by a chimera in a mirage in an alternate universe.

I'm trying to read "The Tragedy of Joe Biden" by Maureen Dowd:

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.