Free Republic

After weeks of intense focus on President Biden’s health and age that ended with his withdrawal from the campaign on Sunday, the script has flipped: Former president Donald Trump is now the oldest presidential candidate in history — and one who has been less transparent about his medical condition than his former opponent. Trump, a 78-year-old with a history of heart disease and obesity, according to experts, has not shared any updated bloodwork results or other specific information during this campaign to help experts assess his ongoing medical risks. Instead, he has released a vague, three-paragraph letter from his primary...

— Sitting in the Oval Office behind the iconic Resolute desk in 2022, an animated President Joe Biden described the challenge of leading a psychologically traumatized nation.The United States had endured a life-altering pandemic. There was a jarring burst of inflation and now global conflict with Russia invading Ukraine, as well as the persistent threat to democracy he felt Donald Trump posed. How could Biden possibly heal that collective trauma?

@Red_Pill_US Poof...It's magic 😭

For 23 days, President Joe Biden insisted on pushing forward with his reelection bid in the face of calls from Democratic lawmakers and donors for him to step aside. And then, almost on a dime, things changed. Early Saturday, Biden told senior aides it was “full steam ahead” for the campaign. But by later that evening, he had changed his mind following a long discussion with his two closest aides. Steve Ricchetti, who’s been with Biden since his days in the Senate, drove to see the president at his house on the Delaware shore on Friday. Mike Donilon arrived on...

As my wife and son and I awaited the start of the debate, before Biden tottered up to the podium to his mumblecore destiny, I said to my son: “I’m telling you my suspicion now, rather than after. I think the date of this debate is the most important thing about it.” My son asked why. OK, how’s this? ... Think outside the box, Joe.-Why wait till October, with everything on the line? Cut it back to just two debates. And here’s the beauty part, Joe: Do the first debate six weeks before the convention! It’ll be radical, three months...

WASHINGTON — “I need you and Mike at the house,” President Joe Biden said late Saturday afternoon. Biden was on the phone from his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with Steve Ricchetti, a counselor to the president and one of his closest advisers. He was referring to Mike Donilon, his chief strategist and longtime speechwriter. Soon, both men were in Rehoboth Beach, socially distanced from the president, who was recovering from COVID. From that afternoon and far into the night, the three worked on one of the most important and historic letters of Biden’s presidency — the announcement of...

ot long after President Joe Biden announced he was stepping aside from the presidential race Sunday, pro-Trump social media influencers had settled on one line of attack: that Democrats had carried out a coup against their own president. [snip] From people who support Donald Trump, the man who tried to steal the 2020 election, this is obviously a ridiculous and absurd thing to say. Yet it echoes a self-interested argument made by Biden himself just two weeks ago, when he argued that him dropping out would be tantamount to ignoring democracy. “The voters — and the voters alone — decide...