Ross Douthat: The Biden Scandal has not gone away

One of the Biden White House’s greatest achievements, from the perspective of its staffers, if not necessarily the country, has been to deny the press the kind of juicy leaks that were constant under Donald Trump and frequent under his predecessors. Save for a very narrow period of time, that is, when there was a push to force an aging president toward the exits: Then and only then we got a drip-drip-drip of fascinating inside information.

For instance, we learned that Biden hadn’t held a full cabinet meeting since last October and that his handlers expected scripted questions from his cabinet officials. We learned that his capacities peak between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and diminish outside that six-hour window. We learned that congressional Democrats, liberal donors and some journalists all had exposure to Biden’s decline that they didn’t discuss publicly until the debacle of the June debate. We learned that none other than Hunter Biden was acting as a close adviser to his father in the crucial days after that debate.

We even learned that from early in his presidency, the first lady’s closest aides worked to shield her husband from the staff that serves the first family in its living quarters, even as the aides themselves were given unusual access to the residence — as though it were essential to create a cocoon of loyalty and silence around the nation’s chief executive even when he isn’t on the job.

These are all interesting and pertinent facts about the man who officially leads the United States in a time of global danger — and they have not ceased to be pertinent because that president is no longer running for re-election.

For a few weeks the media coverage of the Biden White House built up the idea that there was a major scandal here, implicating the inner circle that encouraged the president to run for re-election and practiced deception amid his obvious decline.

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