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August 6, 2020

Biden, by refusing to take a cognitive test, proves he needs one

By Andrea Widburg

In July, President Trump baited a cognitive test trap for Joe Biden. On Tuesday, that trap started to close around the confused and combative Democrat presidential candidate.

It’s evident to anyone paying attention that Joe Biden is showing signs of cognitive decline.  He always was a liar, a buffoon, a blowhard, and an ignoramus, but those were personality traits. What we see now is someone who is experiencing true age-related dementia. Those who have seen a loved one diminish before their eyes can recognize that Joe’s mental lights, like the banks of light in a stadium at the game’s end, are going out one by one.

During an interview with Chris Wallace last month, Donald Trump made a big deal out of saying that he had taken a standard cognitive test and that it was “very hard.” A lot of people ripped Trump for saying that, because it made him sound silly, but I was pretty sure that Trump was baiting a trap for Biden.

The moment Trump said the test was hard, every leftist pundit in America insisted it was dead easy. Even Don Lemon claimed it was easy, despite being unable to distinguish a hippo from a rhino.

The trap started to close on Biden on Tuesday night when he had an interview with CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett. The full interview won’t air until tonight, but a couple of segments were leaked out. The most damning was Biden’s response when Barnett asked him, “Have you taken a cognitive test?”

Biden was instantly outraged. This anger is a common response from people who retain enough mental competence to know they are losing their abilities. Fully cognitive people respond with reason or humor, not with anger.

In addition to anger, people who are losing their faculties are often defensive and will turn threatening questions back on the questioner. In Biden’s case, he essentially said it was easy to imagine that a black journalist was a junkie.

The disaster kept going when Bide confused Trump with Don Lemon, for it was Lemon who confused animals on the test, not Trump, and lapsed into near gibberish. As you can see, the whole thing is a trainwreck:

No matter how you look at it, this is a miserable and embarrassing performance. It also probably wouldn’t have happened if Trump hadn’t earlier goaded the media into insisting that any moron could pass the cognitive test.

In addition to being angry and racist, Biden also lied (or perhaps he just forgot). Biden explicitly told Barnett, “No, I haven’t taken a test.” This statement directly contradicted what Biden said in June when he told a reporter that, when it came to cognitive decline, “I’ve been tested. I’ve been tested constantly.”

CNN tried to rescue Biden by saying that what he told Barnett “clarifies” his earlier assertion that he was regularly tested. Reading the CNN article, though, shows that CNN uses the word “clarifies” as a stand-in for either “lies” or “forgets.”

What almost got lost in the shuffle was the fact that, in the same interview, Biden was also incoherent when asked about his plans for dealing with China. He offered only a mad swirl of meaningless words.

Significantly, he isn’t stuttering, which happens when the speaker gets stuck on a single word or sound. Instead, Biden is a pathetic man trying to cope with the fact that he can’t hold onto a thought for more than one or two seconds at a time:

Did you get that? Neither did Joe or anyone else listening.

I’m not ordinarily nasty about people suffering from something as serious and tragic as dementia. However, Joe is still sufficiently cognizant to realize what’s going on. If he had any moral decency, he’d withdraw to allow the Democrat party to line up a legitimate candidate. Joe, however, has never had moral decency, and he’s not going to start now.

At some point, though, Biden’s handlers will have to deal with what’s happening. It’s one thing for a candidate to have a low-key “front porch” campaign, as Warren G. Harding did 100 years ago, and as Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley before him.

It’s another thing entirely for a political party to have a campaign that revolves around “Help, I’m locked in the basement, and I can’t get out.” Eventually, the American people are going to figure out that neither the Democrat candidate nor the Democrat party wishes them or their country well.

Image: Twitter screengrab

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