Remember in October when Joe Biden solemnly assured his audience that “We [presumably referring to Barack Obama and him] built one of the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics”?
Good times. The LU staff speculation was that Biden may have been referring to the literal voter fraud organization operated by the activist group ACORN on the Obama-Biden campaign’s behalf.
Another interpretation was that Biden meant to refer to the team of 600 or more lawyers assembled by his campaign and the DNC in 2020, purportedly to investigate voter fraud, as opposed to committing it.
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In either case, it seemed like an odd thing to say. As we noted at the time, it wasn’t an off-the-cuff comment. Biden was reading it from a script.
Now, in an interview this past Thursday with CNN’s Jake Tapper, conducted jointly with running-mate Kamala Harris, Biden has emitted another whopper. If anything, this one is weirder.
Tapper set it up with an anodyne question about “how Biden and Harris will get along now that they’re ‘no longer competitors.’”
That seems easy enough to answer without going anywhere strange with it. Frankly, it was a question Harris should have fielded, not because she attacked Biden so vigorously during the campaign but because she’d be the vice president, with the obligation to cooperate, and Biden would be the president.
But Biden started out promisingly enough: “It’s a matter of — the thing — we are simpatico on our philosophy of government, and simpatico on how we want to attach — approach these issues that we’re facing. And so I don’t have — and when we disagree, it’ll be just like it’s — so far it’s been just like when Barack and I did. It’s in private. She’ll say I think we should do A, B, C, or D. And I’ll say I like A, don’t like B and C. And let’s go, OK.”
Then Biden let fly: “And like I told Barack, if I read something where there’s a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll develop some disease and say I have to resign.”
The rat-a-tat repetition of “I’ll, I’ll” gives off a suppressed discomfort vibe of some magnitude, although it’s hard to tell if Biden is trying to stop himself, or perhaps steel himself. He seems to know he’s saying something startling.
Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:
"Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there's a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I'll develop some disease and say I have to resign." pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020
But he manages to glide over it, keeping a straight face. The viewer may be wondering what he just heard. As Joseph Curl puts it at Just the News, “Biden doesn’t smile after the comment, but he looks over to Harris, who also doesn’t laugh but shakes her head with a wry smile and pursed lips, as she did in her debate against Vice President Mike Pence.”
Yes. “Wry” would be one obvious reaction to a man the Democrats and media are anxious to establish as the president-elect saying, “I’ll develop some disease and say I have to resign.”
It sounds as if Biden is saying that’s what he promised Obama when he was serving as vice president, and that he would adopt the same commitment as president, giving Harris the assurance from it.
This hypothesis, and the evidence from Biden of geriatric dementia, also raise the question whether he’s blurting out a plan much of the public already suspects the Democrats have concocted. Maybe the Democrat movers and shakers will want old Joe in fewer of the planning sessions from now on. (The allusion to Obama can’t pass unnoticed. Biden has yet to talk like a man who is about to take the reins of government in his own right.)
What isn’t clear is why the Americans who voted for Biden would want this vow to be in place. I would have thought it was awfully bizarre for a vice president to say he’d resign over principled disputes with the president – and even more so to propose resigning as president in such a case.
Mainly, I’d think it was extraordinary to propose electing a president who would vow to develop a disease and resign if he had disagreements with others in his party. If you find yourself having to explain away this Biden comment, while suggesting that installing Biden in the Oval Office would be a return to some form of “normal,” you’re doing the whole thing wrong.
In light of this arresting disclosure, Biden’s tale of breaking his foot-bone in a post-shower romp with the dog, involving a throw rug and an “alleyway” (possibly what most people refer to as a hallway), comes off as – well, less momentous, certainly, if no more realistic-sounding.
Tapper and Harris both moved quickly past the awkward “I’ll fake a disease and light out of Dodge” moment.
Two things are clear. One is that Joe Biden’s excited utterances are likely to be a source of unintended exposure in the coming weeks. The other is that the media strain at gnats in their every approach to Donald Trump – indeed, they use deceptive filters where there are no gnats, to simulate the appearance of gnats to strain at – but swallow camels from Joe Biden without breaking stride.
