Biden seldom scene, heard since presidential term ended

Jim Geraghty of National Review Online ponders the current physical state of the last American president.

[D]id you notice that we haven’t seen Joe Biden speak in person at any public event since Inauguration Day? It’s been two months.

Biden did attend Mass in Wilmington, Del., on Monday morning, so we have proof of life, so to speak.

On February 1, Biden offered a two-minute pre-taped video message at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting.

And as far as I can tell, that’s it. Jill Biden appeared at the Super Bowl, without her husband.

But Biden’s done no interviews, given no speeches. He’s not even given any responses to shouted questions from reporters. He’s allegedly writing a memoir of his White House years, but we know that thing will be ghostwritten.

Now, everyone can draw their own conclusions from this; it’s not unusual for a former president to stay out of the spotlight after his presidency ends.

But just about everybody in the Democratic Party told us from January 2021 to July 2024 that the octogenarian Biden was good to go for another four-year term. Democrats insisted, “Joe Biden has been transparent about his health,” no matter how many times Biden had public lapses in memory. “ White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, during an appearance on CNN in June 2022, insisted that Biden was so energetic that she can’t keep up with him. She said in November 2023 that she would put President Biden’s stamina up against anyone’s. In February 2023, Delaware’s Democratic Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester insisted Biden’s “energy is higher now than maybe when I first met him” in the 1980s.

To paraphrase the prominent legal expert Vincent Gambini, everything those folks just said was horse pucky.

So, the fact that Joe Biden has barely been seen in public since Inauguration Day makes it fair to wonder just how mentally and physically sharp he is these days. And if he’s not so sharp and aware of what’s going on around him now . . . what condition was he in for those last few months of his presidency?