It is time for some serious congressional oversight. Not “oversight” like the J6 Committee — hijacked by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and bereft of legitimacy from before the first gavel fell — but more in the vein of the 9/11 Commission or the Iran-Contra Committee. Because we need answers on when former President Joe Biden‘s cognitive abilities became impaired and who participated in the cover-up of that disability.
And Congress must at least begin to explore using the power the 25th Amendment provides it to change the method by which impaired presidents are replaced by vice presidents.
At least four times in the past 105 years the country has been led by a president with significant medical issues about which the public was deceived — Woodrow Wilson after his stroke in October of 1919, Franklin Roosevelt in the last months of his life in 1945, and Biden at least since the debate with President Donald Trump on June 27 of last year. President John F. Kennedy also suffered from Addison’s disease, which was not disclosed to the public, nor were the treatments he underwent.
President Dwight Eisenhower had a major heart attack in 1955, and the public followed his recovery closely. When President Ronald Reagan was shot and later when he underwent surgery for colon cancer, the public followed every medical report.
It is assumed that free people are entitled to know the health of their most important leader, that Ike and the Gipper played by the rules. Certainly, our enemies do their best to know the facts about our president’s health.
When a foreign official visited an American official during my years in government, it was common practice to receive a briefing paper from the intelligence community on the foreign visitor for the use of the principal. Nothing fancy, and few of these profiles were classified above “sensitive,” though some were.
These sketches are not unlike Wikipedia entries today, with the key exception that America’s intelligence agencies are not “open source” and don’t allow editing of their profiles by unknown third parties. These professional profiles contain as much data as is judged to be useful to the recipient, depending on the principal’s position and responsibilities. The profiles could be relied upon, especially as they told us when they couldn’t be relied upon.
It is assumed all around the world that countries with intelligence agencies maintain such files on all foreign leaders of significance. It is thus likely that every intelligence agency of any major world power had an assessment of Biden as well as profiles of his family and senior officials. There are experts in understanding the world’s decision-makers. Whether they are good at their jobs or not, there are a lot of profiles in a lot of files around the globe.
What do we think those profiles said about Biden in his last year in office? Or his first year? Do you think even for a moment that the intelligence professionals of the world know less than America’s media does? Don’t we have to assume that they know at least as much as the average American watching cable news (and without any of the rooting interests that infect legacy media of all sorts)? We have to assume that they do know, and we also have to assume that dictators such as Vladimir Putin take account of the condition of the American president.
Intelligence professionals are paid, of course, to go much deeper than even the best-sourced scribbler. Some of them go to work every day, afraid for their lives if they are proven wrong or if their bosses are surprised by events. They might be too careful, but they are careless only at great personal risk. They certainly don’t trim their assessments to help either the Democrats or the Republicans.
EXPOSING THE COVER-UP OF BIDEN’S HEALTH IS MORE URGENT THAN EVER
We have to develop some way for somebody to demand of any president, Republican or Democrat, an assessment of their ability to act decisively and with a clear head. Few people know that the 25th Amendment does not mandate that the vice president and the Cabinet are the only people charged with determining whether a president has lost his or her ability to govern.
“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments,” the Amendment begins, “or of such other body as Congress may by law provide.” Time for the Congress to consider its responsibility under this grant of Constitutional authority. Because the 25th Amendment failed.
Hugh Hewitt is a longtime conservative commentator and author. He hosts the Hugh Hewitt Show on Salem Radio every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m.