If He’s Lost His Wits, Joe Must Call It Quits

It’s become a political cliché to recall how Virginia’s Sen. William Scott, declared the Senate’s dumbest member by a D.C. rag, called a news conference to deny the charge – thus proving it.

Until Thursday night.

That’s when President Joe Biden – confirmed by a special counsel to be a man of “diminished faculties in advancing age” who in interviews couldn’t drudge up when he was veep, when his son died, who his political friends and foes were or his past policy positions – convened a nationally televised presser to refresh the relevance of Scott’s storied screwup.

Say you ain’t slow, Joe. 

The daft Delawarean’s angry retort to a cutting kickoff quotation from the counsel’s report: “I’m well meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing.”

As if. The hastily called gaggle dissolved in seconds into a crazed, chaotic, feverish, free-for-all feeding frenzy with the octogenarian as the hapless, helpless red meat. 

The commander in chief’s inability to command the room was the second clue that everything alleged about his mental mush was gospel truth – agreeing to hold the presser being the first.

All multiplied exponentially by his customary combination of tetched and testy demeanor, unsteady steps, groggy gaze, and, of course, foggy flubs – hanging a reference Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as Mexico’s president onto his recent resurrections of dearly departed foreign leaders.

Ladies and Gentlemen: This. Is. Not. Hard.

Your correspondent needn’t elaborate on a crystal-clear conclusion the electorate has already long ago reached – including 54% of Democrats.

If he’s lost his wits, Sleepy Joe must quit.

Even if that means America leaps from the frying pan into the Towering Inferno with the ascension of the dimmest political bulb since – well, William Scott. 

Meanwhile, the president further slumped with his limp effort to distinguish his get-out-of-jail-free card from another special counsel’s decision to throw everything – including a virtual warehouse of legal kitchen sinks – at one Donald J. Trump for his own misadventures with classified communications.

Specifically, 31 counts under the constitutionally questionable Espionage Act piled onto an ex-prez who engaged in no espionage, with six others layered on top. Because, as Biden quoted Counsel Robert Hur, Trump “refused to return documents for months” and “obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

The Donald’s response? It’s “selective prosecution” to go nuclear on him while handling Sleepy Joe with extra-plush kid gloves, presumably the better as not to wake him.

Now, the experts opine that legally, a selective prosecution defense is one hard nut to crack. The Supremes require a claimant to “demonstrate that the prosecutorial policy had a discriminatory effect and was motivated by a discriminatory purpose.”

More specifically, the defendant must show that he or she “has been selected for prosecution while others similarly situated who committed the same acts have not been prosecuted” and “the discriminatory selection for prosecution was invidious and done in bad faith.”

Hmmm. Others similarly situated and committing the same acts?

Donald Trump was leaving the Oval Office after serving as president. Biden was squirreling away records from the time he was a U.S. Senator as well as vice president.

Both were alleged to hold onto documents with national security implications, and “willfully”— a charge Biden forcefully denied again Thursday night, although audio exists of him referring to “classified” materials he had uncovered.

Trump, for his part, admitted keeping documents but claimed alternatively that he has a right to, or that he had officially declassified all the documents he kept. Although recordings also allegedly exist of him acknowledging some materials were still confidential.

Trump supposedly possessed a few hundred forbidden documents, some turned over willingly and others seized in a dramatic and unprecedented search of his residence (including his wife’s underwear drawer). Biden had some 90 documents removed in a combination of friendly FBI searches and investigations his legal team was permitted to conduct on their own.

Yes, Trump is additionally charged with hiding evidence and being untruthful with investigators. But how can one take such charges seriously – or fault the ex-president for taking steps, however misguided, to shield himself – when FBI stooges ambushed his former National Security Advisor within weeks of taking office and trapped him into statements he didn’t even believe were false? When the entire federal law enforcement and national security apparatus conspired in a multi-year Russiagate hoax against the 45^th president while he was in office? 

When they, according to a recent filing, ganged up on Trump again, this time in cahoots with the National Archives – starting a full-fledged, multi-agency classified-docs investigation within days of when he left office? And pursued that path instead of engaging in the cordial exchanges of information and negotiations accorded Presidents Clinton and Obama over handling, storage, and access to documents under the chief executive-friendly Presidential Records Act?

Sounds like “invidious,” “bad-faith,” “discriminatory purpose” to this commentator.

And how about “discriminatory effect?” Well, try this on for size: one major-party candidate for president is in the clear legally. The other, to reiterate, is facing 37 charges that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Not to mention a separate, simultaneous prosecution by the same special counsel over bogus charges that he “defrauded the United States” with “lies” about a stolen election. Costing time, attention, and tens of millions of dollars in legal fees in the heat of a campaign.

But forget about the legal mumbo-jumbo. As a political matter, it’s plain as the Botox tightening faux-President Biden’s face that the distinct approaches, burdens and potential outcomes are unfair and downright un-American, if the term even means anything anymore in a nation that is completely unrecognizable. And at this point, the American people have surely had enough. 

If the disparate charges are unfit, the feds must acquit. Or more accurately, withdraw both the pending federal cases against The Orange Man.

Even as the nation faces head-on the implications of further revelations that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania is equally unfit – for office.

Bob Maistros is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.

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