Last night’s performance by Joe “President” Biden was literally pitiful, like watching the elderly Hugh Hefner still flouncing around in his smoking jacket, pawing at buxom women who could have been his granddaughters’ classmates. It was hard to watch but impossible to look away, like a slow-motion crash of a train full of Mafia hitmen. You had to keep reminding yourself: This is still a human being made in the image of God with an immortal soul. Which is bad news for him when you think about it.

And today it’s hard even to know what to think. I usually have good instincts and an eye for what’s actually happening. For instance, I knew by January 7, 2021, that the disturbance at the U.S. Capitol the day before was a set-up by the Left, and wrote a column about it. I warned in December 2002 that the Iraq War was a catastrophe waiting to happen. I knew in 1992 that Pat Buchanan was right about the “religious war” the Left was waging against Christians.

On the other hand, I’ve also been disastrously wrong. I was sure through election night 2016 that Donald Trump couldn’t beat Hillary Clinton. I believed, at first, some of the lies about General Mike Flynn. I even (and this is hard to admit) voted for George W. Bush once, in 2004. (If you decide to stop reading at this point, I wouldn’t blame you.)

So I’m not some kind of prophet. What I write here is speculation, an effort to prepare myself for the next few weeks of political chaos. But I don’t have any answers. In fact, what I have are questions, as I’m sure most Americans do. So let’s stick with those for now, and use them as jumping off points which might advance our understanding.

Was the Presidential Debate a Set-Up?

Was Joe Biden sent into the debate with Donald Trump with the full expectation that he would perform so badly that he would take himself out of the running? So the Democrats could nominate someone else who’s more electable, fully conscious, and doesn’t have a son facing prison for a real felony — just one of a long list of crimes which he skated on not only because of his connections to The Big Guy … but the CIA. 

That’s a tempting theory, especially when you see all the columns that were already written, copy-edited, and ready to run within hours at major papers across the country, respectfully calling for Biden to patriotically step aside. They were like pre-written obituaries, which newspapers keep handy for elderly celebrities.

Last night vividly showed what deceitful herd animals corporate media employees are.

They spent months denying Biden’s decline, claiming people only believe in it because of GOP “cheap fakes.”

Soon as it became too obvious to hide, they all switched narratives immediately. pic.twitter.com/HNSyg9HN1A

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 28, 2024

As much as last night was an indictment of the Democratic Party for misleading party members and the country about the mental acuity and health of the president, the media deserve far more derision and scorn.

I and others were repeatedly criticized by the media for questioning… https://t.co/oPfhZQWGai

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) June 28, 2024

Jenna Maroney, Dead at 32

If you watched the classic series 30 Rock, you might remember the episode where 40-something narcissist maniac Jenna Maroney comes across the video obit her own show prepared for her — and is outraged that it’s not sufficiently glowing. So she produces and narrates her own, which begins: “Jenna Maroney, dead at 32.”

It’s almost as if the top dogs in our media have known for a long time that Joe Biden hasn’t been really running things … if indeed he ever did. In a column entitled “Barack Obama, President for Life” I pointed to evidence that Obama was effectively dictating policy, and implementing it via staffers, with Biden as a hapless figurehead who happily stuffed his family’s coffers with cash, which he values more than power.

Even while Trump was in office, Obama’s people still served as U.S. attorneys, ran the Deep State, and thanks to Jeff Sessions’ idiotic decision to recuse himself from the Russiagate Hoax, ran the Dept. of Justice. Trump’s presidency was neutered the moment he listened to Mike Pence and agreed to fire General Flynn — at the desperate insistence of an intel community that was terrified by Flynn’s plans to investigate its corruption and deep political bias. Trump did his best, of course, which is why our Deep State kept impeaching him, and why it’s now trying to imprison him and his top supporters.

So are we helping the Democrats when we crow about Biden’s meltdown? Should we be standing up for him as the candidate duly chosen by Democrat voters in the primaries, which it’s frankly un-democratic for his party to now replace? You made the bed, you sleep in it. In several states, replacing Biden with any other nominee might not even be legal.

Don’t tell me that it’s dangerous to the country to leave Biden in office. Whoever has really been running things into the ground for the past three and a half years is still in charge today, and will still be in charge if Biden, or some other Democrat, wins in November. The name of the figurehead could be Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or King Charles III, but that hardly matters.

Will the Democrats Tear Each Other to Shreds?

However little it affects us as citizens which front man the Democrats pick to play Commander in Chief, it matters intensely to desperately ambitious ideologues such as Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. Like catty Hollywood starlets competing for a choice role on camera, they want to see their names in lights and are lining up for the casting couch.

The dysfunctional coalition of hate groups, ethnic grifts, and sexual eccentrics that is the Left doesn’t function as smoothly as the Deep State that it empowers. Right now, the outraged Muslims and open Marxists who man the Left’s riots are at the throats of the self-hating Jews who write the biggest checks. They can’t agree on whether Israel ought to be outright murdered, or simply encouraged to commit suicide.

It’s hard to see how the Democrats can shove aside Vice President Harris, however much she is loathed by pretty much everyone in America. (She barely got any primary votes in her own home state in 2016.) She might well lose an election to Donald Trump, whom many black voters will actively prefer over the patronizing, elitist California Democrat.

Will We Get Six Months of President Kamala Harris?

However, if Harris is thrown overboard too callously in favor of some (boo, hiss!) white male like Gavin Newsom, that might suppress black turnout — perhaps enough to make the kind of voter fraud the Left will need to carry swing states too blatant to get away with. Will the party bigwigs cut a deal with Harris? Make Biden resign, let her play president for a few months, nominate someone else, and promise her a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court after January? If no justice retires or dies, they can proceed with their plan to expand and pack the court. Harris can be the first beneficiary of that unpatriotic scheme.

Or will the rabble of un-American factions that constitutes the Left implode before our eyes, and hand Trump a win so convincing that even Dominion, and thousands of vote mules, and our propaganda apparatus that identifies as “Media” can’t contrive to steal it?

At this point all we can do is ponder and pray.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of more than 10 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.