I was not surprised by Biden’s debate performance, and at first glance thought it just mediocre, certainly not cause for a crisis. But that’s because I consume too much alternate media, and have seen the endless string of viral clips of Biden falling down the main stairs of Air Force One (and being reassigned to the shorter crew stairs in response). I’ve seen the memes and loops of his many gaffes, and the awkwardly long pauses where Joe just drifts off when he is no longer in the spotlight or next to Jill.

So the debate held little surprise for me. But for those whose media diet is slim, and whose images of Biden were relegated to highly edited mainstream clips, they saw Biden in-the-real for the first time and it shocked the hell out of them. It was clear what so many have said before to little belief: The Emperor has no clothes on.

Some 85 percent of voters thought Biden was too frail to be president. That massive number of Americans must include almost everyone who has cared for an aging relative and knows the signs: mixed up words, forgotten details, the long, empty stares where conversation used to be. His debate performance and other stumbles were symbols of a deteriorating man, not signs of a bad night. Biden’s boast that he faces a cognitive test every day is ironically borne out by the results: an endless war in the Ukraine where there is no path to victory, an endless war in Gaza where the Israel mocks Biden’s red lines, and then the domestic issues of immigration and the economy, particularly intransigent inflation eating away at paychecks. If the presidency has been a test, Biden fails. Never mind bad optics; Biden failed at the real meat of the job, which is not being discussed. His own stubbornness and the games played around him weakened America at home and left it exposed and vulnerable to forces abroad.

Which brings us to Biden Problem Two—actually a Kamala problem, the fact that the White House, Democratic Party and Joe himself have been, abetted by the mainstream media, lying to us for years about the condition of first Candidate Biden and then President Biden.  We now can surmise that the 2020 basement campaign, supposedly compelled by Covid, was actually a subterfuge, a way to spoon-feed good images and sound bites of Biden to the public and hide his ongoing condition. Clever propaganda, like Franklin Roosevelt appearing to “stand” at public events when in fact in private he was wheelchair-bound due to polio. The Wall Street Journal reports congressional leaders were worried about Biden’s mental state back in 2021. Democrats covered it up. That’s whom Kamala is beholden to, leaving the Democratic base to consist of Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries.

Kamala’s problem is not with the undecided voters; it is with Democratic voters. How can they believe her after such malarkey? Indeed, it was only a week before the debate the White House was claiming video of Biden wandering off and/or falling down was the result of nefarious editing and visual trickery (that line of argument dissipated quickly post-debate.) Then it became a dead solid accepted fact that Biden was senile, and Democrats were paralyzed.

No one listened to anything except questions about Biden’s ability. No one seemed to ask but likely thought about why this was hidden from the public. Kamala begins her campaign shouting into the wind, “Believe me!” Why should anyone? Did she not see Biden's deterioration and keep silent about it? Meanwhile, the Democratic party, which has accused Trump of being anti-democracy, is running a candidate who never won a primary, removing the loser via some backroom process as transparent as chocolate pudding. Remember all the moaning about the many political and Constitutional crises Trump was to unleash? Here’s a real one.

You’ll hear no mea culpa from the media about remaining quiet over what they knew from their own close contact with the President, as they remained silent after lying about Russiagate and Hunter’s not-Russian laptop. They saw the real Joe Biden and, instead of informing the American people, acted as agents of the Democratic Party to help cover things up. In an era where everything about Trump is fair game and then some (if there’s no lead story today, make one up!) the media was silent about Joe. This is the same media that for four years of Trump bleated emptily about the 25th amendment and how Trump was unstable, unqualified, and mentally ill.

To make things worse, the media pivoted twice in a two week span, jumping on Biden to quit the race like school cafeteria bullies (Bill Maher called them “mean girls who smelled blood in the water”) and then spewing out funereal dirges about Biden the statesman when he did drop out. It was almost as if someone was directing the whole affairs from afar. Maybe it was  the MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, who admonished the home-team corporate media to ramp up its negative coverage of Trump while not “ginning up” reasons to criticize the vice president. Kirschner, on YouTube, urged the media to prioritize critical coverage of Trump while treating Harris better than it treated Biden following the June debate.

The so-called defenders of democracy abetted a cover-up and a coup in plain sight. Credibility? Why should anyone believe them about anything Kamala-related going forward?