The Vacant Oval Office

On January 20th, 2021, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. took the oath of office as the 46th President of the United States.

However, all evidence shows that he is not the actual leader of this country:

Vice President Kamala Harris is taking calls with foreign heads of state.

White House staffers have cut video feeds to prevent Mr. Biden from facing unscripted questions.

First Lady Jill Biden is always standing by to make sure her husband sticks to the talking points.

Even prior to the election, many on both the right and the left worried about Mr. Biden’s apparent cognitive decline. Yet the Democratic Party cleared the field and presented Mr. Biden as the only alternative to a second term for President Donald Trump.

This issue transcends politics. Whether they agree with his policies are not, the American people deserve to know that the person who swore to protect and defend the Constitution is actually the person who is making the high-level decisions that affect millions of lives throughout the world. The President of the United States is supposed to be a leader, not only of the government but of his party, but the Democratic Party is treating Joe Biden as a figurehead.

President Harry Truman famously had a sign on the oval office desk that said, “The buck stops here.” Today, we have no idea where the buck stops. Who is making decisions about policy in the White House? Who is reviewing the dozens of executive orders that Mr. Biden has signed since his inauguration? Who is briefing Press Secretary Jen Psaki before her daily press conferences? Is it Vice President Harris? Secretary of State Anthony Blinken? Chief of Staff Ron Klain? Perhaps First Lady Dr. Jill Biden?

If, God forbid, America should face invasion or some other major catastrophe, who will make the ultimate decision about how to react? In the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Hillary Clinton released an ad claiming that she would be prepared to take an emergency call at 3:00 am. Today, we cannot be sure that Mr. Biden is prepared to take emergency calls at 3:00 pm.

On Jesse Kelly‘s radio show last week, Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson suggested not only that Psaki had almost zero access to Mr. Biden, but that former Obama Administration official Susan Rice was running the show behind the scenes. I do not remember Rice placing herself before the American people as a candidate for the highest office in the land, do you?

The only place we can be absolutely sure the buck is not stopping is at the desk of President Joe Biden himself.

• Last week, Mr. Biden seemingly forgot both the name of his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as well as that of the Pentagon.
• During the campaign, Mr. Biden famously forgot the words to the Declaration of Independence – or, as he called it, “you know, the thing.”

Mr. Biden has been in office for nearly two months but has yet to face the media in a press conference. His predecessor, on the other hand, routinely spent hours answering questions from hostile reporters One naturally wonders if the Biden Administration fears that he is simply not capable of conducting a press conference on his own. If Joe Biden is not running the show, then who is?

When President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig caused a minor media tempest when he told reporters that he was “in control” at the White House, pending the return of Vice President Bush. Today, however, even in the face of tremendous evidence that President Biden is most assuredly not in control of his White House, the administration and their media allies continue to pretend that he is. Every day, Press Secretary Jen Psaki explains that the president is monitoring this situation or reviewing that one, as if everything is normal. Yet it is clearly not normal.

A figurehead president is not entirely unprecedented. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke after returning home from negotiations to end World War I. Mr. Wilson spent several months in bed, being seen only by a handful of trusted officials as well as his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson. Many believe that Mrs. Wilson was actually running the White House at this time, as she carried messages back and forth to her bedridden husband.

Vice President Thomas Marshall refused to declare President Wilson incapacitated, which would have allowed him to assume the duties of Acting President, perhaps for fear of appearing overambitious.

The presidency has changed greatly since 1919. In addition to his duties as Head of State, the President sits atop a vast federal bureaucracy that has immense influence over the daily lives of the American people. More importantly, however, every president since Harry Truman has carried the awesome responsibility for choosing if and when to use nuclear weapons. Cognizant of this, the Democratic Congress recently urged the White House to consider removing sole responsibility for America’s nuclear arsenal from the president. According to Politico, nearly three dozen Democrats wrote a letter suggesting that “…vesting one person with this authority entails real risks.” This has been true ever since the invention of atomic weapons – why bring it up now?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced a bill last autumn that would establish a committee that would have the authority to declare a president incapacitated and incapable of performing his duties, allowing the Vice President to assume the role of Acting President. Many in the media assumed that this was proposal was an attack on President Trump, who had recently been diagnosed with Covid-19, but in reality, this was laying the groundwork for a Joe Biden administration. “This is not about President Trump,” Pelosi stated at the time.

President Joe Biden is clearly not able to perform the duties required of his office. Everyone knows it, but the Democrats and the media continue to engage in a dubious charade. The American people deserve to know who is making decisions that will set the course of our country for the next four years, and more. The American people deserve a leader who is accountable to the voters, and that leader is the duly inaugurated President of the United States, not a shadowy group of staffers and bureaucrats who have propped up Mr. Biden like a puppet. It is time to tell the American people the truth about where the buck is stopping in the White House.

The balance of power in the American government has shifted over the course of history between an imperial presidency and an all-powerful Congress. Yet today we have an Executive Branch that is all-powerful, as Congress has abdicated its lawmaking responsibilities, but the head of that branch, the President of the United States, is a mere figurehead for the deep state bureaucracy. The Oval Office is vacant, and the decline and fall of America continues to accelerate.