“Tell me who enlarged NATO. Tell me who did the Pacific basin. Tell me who did something that you’ve never done with your Bronze Star — and your — like my son — and, you know — proud of your leadership. But guess what? Well, what’s happening? We got Korea and Japan working together.”

Yikes. That was Joe Biden on a Zoom call July 13th with a group of “concerned” Democratic House members. (“concerned” is the consensus word adopted by the mainstream news media to mean “panicked that the public now knows what their party —and we—knew all along and deliberately hid from the American people.” )

The President was addressing Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a retired Army Ranger who was awarded a Bronze Star. This alarming quote was just revealed to the Washington Post by one of the participants on the call, which was recorded. It was presumably released now, almost a week later, because Biden hasn’t yet yielded to pressure and entreaties from the party to announce his withdrawal as a candidate for re-election in November. The Post’s headline for its report on the call and its significance: “Behind the scenes as Joe Biden lost control of the Democratic Party.”

[That meme above is from today’s unusually funny collection of headlines, memes and cartoons in Power Line’s weekly collection. The “sloped roof” gags are especially good.]

Observations:

1. Did anyone tell Biden that Zoom calls can be recorded by any participant with a click of a mouse? If not, then he was sabotaged by his own staff. A participant sharing what was clearly meant to be a private call is a breach of trust and confidentiality. Of course, this is the kind of thing that was done to President Trump repeatedly. Would you call leaking the recording to the Post whistle-blowing? I’d call it self-serving. The whistle-blower in this case is at no peril of being retaliated against: his or her obligation is to not hide behind “anonymity” and “confidential source” status.

2. On the other hand, now Biden knows how Trump felt every single day of his administration. Condign justice.

3. The outburst is res ipsa loquitur as well as signature significance. It is proof positive that the speaker cannot be reasoned with, and is beyond rational persuasion. I have ended conversations—and banned Ethics Alarms commenters under the blog’s “Stupidity Rule”—with people have expressed more coherent arguments than Joe’s as beyond hope and a waste of my time to try to reason with.

4. But from a President of the United States? The statement is worthy of a 9-year-old. J.D. Vance’s tweet is relevant here:

Yet quite a few prominent Democrats are arguing that, sometimes quite specifically. Many of them literally do not care if the nation is saddled with an incompetent, puppet leader. What matters is thir party (and them) holding on to power.

5. To be fair, the level of logic and analysis revealed by Biden’s statement isn’t too far removed from his thinking process when he was in his prime. What Biden accomplished or didn’t accomplish in the past is 100% irrelevant to the cognitive impairment issue now. He can be excused for not being able to figure that out perhaps, but it is amazing how many flacks, elected officials and Axis pundits make the same inane argument. They aren’t all suffering from dementia. Do they really believe that is a valid argument? Or are they just lying?

6. Why does Biden keep talking about “expanding NATO” as if it’s a major accomplishment? It isn’t even his accomplishment, but never mind: who cares? How does adding Finland and Sweden to NATO make any American more safe, secure, or better off in any way? Is that the best he can up with as a foreign policy achievement? Or is his metaphorical needle just stuck in the groove?

7. Biden’s obsession with his dead son borders on pathological. Commenting on the Post story, Ann Althouse writes in part,” Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange. His son died. Go home and grieve constantly if that’s what you really need to do, but don’t use your dead son randomly as a weapon when you run short of things to say.”

8. Ann adds, “Quite aside from how the Democrats are going to extricate themselves from the idiotic jam they’ve gotten themselves into, the entire world is put at risk when the President of the United States has lost his mind.” Harsh but not unfair.

9. Beau Biden died nine years ago. You can’t fault Joe for still grieving (Mr. Bojangles grieved over his dog 20 years later), but you can fault the President for allowing his grief to interfere with his job. Teddy Roosevelt’s wife and mother died on the same night in his home. Teddy didn’t keep obsessing about it. Right now, it’s ridiculous how many random remarks, thoughts, sights and events remind me of Grace and her sudden death. I still can’t allow it to distract me from clear thinking, my work and my commitments.

10. Nice of the Post to finally reveal these things! It must have received permission from the Axis High Command: surely nobody believes that the Washington Post wasn’t aware of Biden’s decline years ago, do they? But…but…“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and Donald Trump is the one who threatens democracy! How dumb, gullible, brainwashed and biased does someone have to be to still accept that narrative?

11. Answer? THIS dumb, gullible, brainwashed and biased: just look at the comments to the article. Astounding: Post readers must collectively average about 40 IQ points below the average New York Times reader. Here are samples of the overwhelming majority of the comments:

• “One more topic on Joe Biden in Washington Post. There are gazillion Biden topics but none on Trump’s shooting medical report. Very sad, Mainstream media fell in love with Convicted Felon.”
• “The ONLY way we win this for the good of this country, for the good of the entire world, is to vote BLUE NO MATTER WHO which is EXACTLY what it says it is! Stop badgering President Biden. See what happens at the convention. And then no matter who is nominated is who we should all vote for them! For the one and only time, for the one and only reason, we should follow the lead of the fascists. No matter what their thoughts are about the orange traitor they are voting for him, for all the wrong reasons. No matter what our thoughts are on whoever is nominated for our party, we MUST vote for them, for all the right reasons.”
• “Hear, hear! This, above, is how a loyal Democrat and a patriotic American thinks.”
• “We live in an Idiocracy. Clue #1 is the fact that chump has won once and may win again when he shouldn’t be getting more than 3 votes.”
• “It is The Democratic Party that has lost control of itself, and they will rue the day that they started attacking and abusing President Biden.”

• “President Biden is 81, not 82, and when I heard him answering questions during the press conference (all unscripted) he displayed an extraordinary grasp of policy, enormous experience and wisdom. He had a command of everything which he put forth.That he misspoke two names does not indicate that he is “fading fast,” as anyone of any age can do that if they are speaking quickly and covering a lot of ground. He has his lapses, but there is no one on today’s political scene who has the policy expertise that President Biden has.”

• “President Biden spoke, evidencing a wealth of knowledge on policy, vast, political experience and wisdom. People with dementia cannot do that. Can Trump do that? Maybe in your dreams. Trump doesn’t even have the merest sliver of a brain. His entire life has been the con, the scam, the grift, the theft, the cheat, the corruption, the arrogance, the bombast, the abject stupidity. He is interested only in satisfying his own desires for sex, wealth, fame and unfettered power. He has NO INTELLECT. He knows ZILCH about policy. He operates on the lowest level of reptilian instinct. When he speaks—if you can call it that—he ALWAYS bloviates, rants, raves, and spews lies, filth, delusions and cognitive messes.”

• “Even if President Biden had one bad debate, and sometimes stutters, misspeaks or forgets names, when you hear him speak, most of the time, he has a wealth of knowledge on policy, he has vast government experience and wisdom.And all these fools value is YOUTH.”

One bad debate. There really are people who are still saying that. Wow.

There are literally thousands of comments like these. The 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck has infected a dangerous percentage of the public with the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.