Washington Post columnist David Ignatius sparked a firestorm of controversy among Liberals with his column suggesting that Joe Biden should throw in the towel and take Kamala Harris with him.
Ignatius has significant influence with Inside-the-Beltway Democrats. Not everyone agrees with him. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, another prominent liberal commentator, has come to Biden’s defense.
“I’ve covered Biden for 35 years. He has always been a babble merchant, prone to exaggeration and telling stories too good to be true, saying inexplicably wacky things. It was often cleanup on Aisle Biden. So when he acts like this now, it shouldn’t be attributed just to aging. Certainly, he has slowed down. But his staff has exacerbated the problem by trying too hard to keep him in check. Americans know who Uncle Joe is, quirks and all, slower and all. Let them decide,” Dowd writes. “The president’s feelings were no doubt hurt the other day by The Washington Post column by David Ignatius, a charter member of the capital’s liberal elite, saying that Biden should be proud of ‘the string of wins’ from his first term but not run for re-election because he ‘risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.’”
Dowd: WH Staff Should Stop Micromanaging Biden
Dowd argues that Biden’s tendency to speak extemporaneously and to exaggerate is nothing new. It’s something he has done for decades. Holding it against him is something that Dowd contends Democrats should not do. She casts Biden’s staff cutting him off mid-sentence during his press conference in Vietnam as “overmanaging” him and reinforcing the “impression of a fragile chief executive.”
At 80, Biden is the oldest man to have ever held the office. He looks elderly in a way that Donald Trump, who is barely more than three years his junior, does not. Biden’s falls along with his stiff gait have led some to speculate that he’s hiding something.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor at NYU Langone Health who has not worked with Biden, speculated in April that mention of his gait in successive physicals was symptomatic of a “neurodegenerative process involving the frontal lobe of the brain or spinal cord or the possible buildup of fluid (normal pressure hydrocephalus), which could cause both a gait and a cognitive problem.”
Dowd thinks Biden “has done a great job” and calls him an “underdog.”
“And he’s got a point that he is the only one who has beaten Trump,” Dowd said of Ignatius’s thanking Biden for his service and for beating Trump. Dowd continues, “But Biden needs to start looking like he’s in command. His staff is going to have to roll with him and take some risks and stop jerking the reins. Let Joe out of the virtual basement.”
Critics Note Ignatius’ Ties to CIA and the Security State
Ignatius has long been a mouthpiece of the security state, and his comments that Biden should leave could be taken as a hint by some that bosses at the CIA and FBI want him gone – at least some in Conservative circles are trying to make the connection. Rumors have suggested that Biden has appeared aloof during closed-door meetings with Agency personnel.
“Ignatius’ columns are often what the FBI or what the CIA wants you to believe, whether it’s true or not. Ignatius called Chris Steele a ‘truth teller.’ His columns were the pillars propping up the collusion hoax. Ignatius is the columnist who deemed the laptop Russia ‘disinformation.’ See where I’m going here? When American intelligence, the FBI or the CIA, wants to put out a hit, they feed it to little David,” Jesse Watters said during his Fox News monologue. “… [H]is most explosive column of the Biden presidency dropped in the Washington Post and sent DC into a frenzy.”
Watters recalled that Ignatius’s scoop about the Mike Flynn investigation got the ball rolling on what eventually evolved into the Mueller investigation; consequently, Watters speculates that Ignatius’s suggestion that Biden leave is not a mere suggestion.
“This fall we’re going to see a transition from saying Joe is the next FDR to saying, ‘Thanks for playing’; the media that often is like an obedient dog suddenly sounded like [Fox White House Correspondent] Peter Doocy.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
From the Vault
