Is Biden Pulling A ‘Chung Ling Soo’ On America? Or Is It 25th Amendment Time?

In the Christopher Nolan movie “The Prestige,” about competing magicians in 1890s London, there’s a scene where a doddering old performer, Chung Ling Soo, does a magic trick that would require incredible strength.

Alfred Borden, played in the movie by Christian Bale, says the secret behind the trick is that Chung is always pretending to be a doddering old man, on stage and off. “This is the trick. This is why no one can detect his method,” Borden says as Chung struggles to get into his carriage. “Total devotion to his art. A lot of self-sacrifice.”

Why bring this up? Because Biden is either Chung Ling Soo – in which case he keeps his health and wellness under wraps to lower expectations and will put on a masterful performance at his debate with Donald Trump on June 27 as the world watches in amazement.

Or he has deteriorated to the point where his Cabinet must, for the good of the nation, brush up on the 25th Amendment and start removing him from office.

The past few days provided several fresh examples of Biden’s increasingly disturbing decline.

• At a Juneteenth White House celebration, the president can be seen standing like a statue, complete with a vacant stare and half smile, while everyone around him is dancing to the music. Then later, he slurs his speech attempting to read a teleprompter.

• At a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Biden again seems to freeze on stage, as Barack Obama and “comedian” Jimmy Kimmel wave to the crowd. Biden seems to come back to reality only when Obama takes his arm and leads him offstage.

• At the G7 summit in Italy, a parachuter lands in front of the assembled leaders while Biden turns and starts shuffling slowly away from the group, prompting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to walk over and gently return him to the fold.

• At an event honoring the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, Biden starts squatting and looking behind him for a chair while everyone else remains standing (at the 8:29:53 mark). They eventually join Biden sitting down.

In each case, the White House has accused Republicans of deceptively editing the videos. But the context only makes Biden’s actions look worse.

At the Los Angeles fundraiser, for example, Biden looks like he can barely walk as Obama leads him offstage.

And while the rest of the group eventually sits down at the Normandy event, Biden looks as though he has to remember how to execute this maneuver – and then freezes mid-sit while “Dr.” Jill covers her mouth to whisper something to him. This is normal?

At the G7 gathering, a different angle shows Biden walking stiffly over to another group of skydivers, who’d earlier landed and folded up their parachutes, while the rest of the leaders look at the action right in front of them. It’s bizarre, and the concerned looks of Biden’s fellow G7ers tells you everything you need to know about what they thought of it.

See Also: Nearly Half Of Voters Say Biden Not Mentally Fit For A Second Term: I&I/TIPP Poll

But no matter how many times Biden falls down, garbles his words, looks confused, walks like Herman Munster, can’t remember what year it is, the White House insists that he’s fit as a fiddle, both physically and mentally.

Now it has taken to calling videos of Biden behaving badly “cheap fakes.”

“Fresh off being fact-checked by at least 6 mainstream outlets for lying about @POTUS with cheap fakes, Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super pac, the New York Post, is back to disrespecting it’s [sic] readers & itself once again,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates wrote on X.”

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that the clips were put out in “bad faith” by “right-wing critics of the president” who are known to spread “misinformation.” (That’s rich coming from an administration that traffics daily in lies and misinformation about Republicans.)

And, of course, the mainstream media is constantly rushing in to defend Biden against “conservative media” with “fact-checks.” We can almost hear them quoting Chico Marx from “Duck Soup”: “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine thinks this is all something of a ruse, and says “Don’t fall for Joe Biden’s nice old man act — he’s just lowering expectations.”

She says Biden “might act like a doddering incompetent, look like a wax effigy and walk like a robot, but the president has the uncanny ability to exceed all expectations when it counts, politically.”

In other words, she thinks he’s Chung Ling Soo getting ready to dazzle audiences with his acumen.

We suspect the truth is that Biden is far worse in private than what he shows in public, that he needs a strange elixir cooked up by his team of doctors to function, and that the White House press is playing down how bad it knows Biden is so as not to help Trump.

So, even if Biden does manage to put on a good show at the June 27 debate, that will be the act. And nobody should fall for it. The real Biden should no longer be president.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board