WILL TRUMP SIDE WITH THE HARDLINERS ON RUSSIA?

And unspeakable lows in presidential pardons

Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th US President in the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. / Photo by SAUL LOEB/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.

I thought we had hit bottom over the past two years when it was clear to me, and obvious to other journalists, that President Joe Biden was beginning to falter and that it was being covered up by many of his staff. I was told, directly and indirectly, about incidents known to those who served with him in the Senate that made it clear that the president’s memory was going. A journalist who spent time two years ago on Air Force Once with the president and his immediate family told of witnessing Biden unable to finish a sentence. There were repeated accounts by old pals about calls from the president that could not be returned because the President’s calls were being monitored by his staff. The process was a shameful conspiracy of silence that ended with Biden’s evident confusion during his disastrous debate with Trump on June 27. His performance made his much delayed decision to not run for a second term inevitable. It came too late to have a candidate selected by a primary process or an open convention.