With the tacit cooperation of a sympathetic mainstream media that remained stunningly uncurious about a Joe Biden who was so obviously faltering mentally and physically, DC Democrats and the White House were dangerously successful for years in their coverup collusion.

We may never fully know how ominously close the U.S. and, indeed, the free world came to an international disaster with a U.S. commander in chief who had trouble with steps, swinging doors, memory, truth, staying awake, and coherent thoughts.

In a sweet, karmic way, it was Biden’s own arrogance and overconfidence that led him to challenge Donald Trump to that fateful June debate that erased any possibility of an extended White House lease for him. RedState readers were alerted beforehand that the debate "could decide the whole thing." 

It did.

In real-time, the first five of those 90 minutes revealed to 55 million shocked Americans and the world that the 81-year-old chief executive who wanted another term shouldn’t even be allowed to finish the first.

How could any loving family or caring aides allow an unaware Biden to walk off that cliff by himself?

Somebody was watching over the United States that night. And also, for the next 29 interminable weeks that Democrats allowed Biden to remain in office in return for him forfeiting the party's 2024 nomination. 

The welfare and fortunes of the nation that had trusted Democrats did not figure into that Faustian political bargain for one second. It was all about them maneuvering to maintain power as long as dishonestly possible.

Now comes the first wave of books and interviews revealing some of the lies, deceits, and secret machinations that spread like basement mold behind the scenes while a puzzled nation watched with concern. 

You might wonder why authors and journalists who knew so many of these disturbing details and scandalous revelations last year are revealing the tawdry details only now that the election is over and their lucrative book contracts are signed.

I sure would ask that question if I was their employer back then. 

Additional inside accounts will surely emerge as even major actors in the sad stage play seek to cover their tracks and make some money off of what should become career-ending chapters.

We now know, for instance, that Ron Klain, a top aide and veteran operative, was shocked at Biden’s condition when the team assembled for last June’s debate prep. 

As recounted by Chris Whipple in “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History,” Klain said:

He’d never seen [Biden] so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.

Yet Klain remained in place as one of the most ardent ongoing Biden supporters, publicly and privately, urging him to stay in the reelection race. Why?

You might think that a longtime aide to the commander in chief who says he became so sincerely concerned about that president’s mental and physical condition would intervene somehow? If not for the nation’s sake, then perhaps for the sake of the clearly troubled friend who had trusted him for so long?

Why Klain did not do that raises serious suspicions about his motive and the motives of everyone else there, including Biden’s wife, nine years younger, who so fiercely fought to prop him up and enthusiastically covered for the addled man they publicly maintained was “sharp as a tack.” 

Let’s be clear, their positions of power and prominence and the likelihood of lucrative jobs post-White House depended on the old man continuing in office, as did his aides' individual annual salaries that could total up to $300,000.

For that matter, those are the same Biden employees who witnessed up close Biden’s decline, who kept him hidden even back in the 2020 basement campaign when they often concluded his public activities by 10:30 a.m. The excuse was COVID, though that did not keep Trump secluded. For some reason, media failed to wonder about that, too.

Another new book, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” details how even the most outspoken Biden advocates like Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), whose supportive rhetoric steadied Biden’s stumbling primary campaign, and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) opted to duck Democrat debate-watch parties because both knew full-well how bad Biden was likely to be. Their fears were fulfilled.

Pelosi, who’s nearly three years older than Biden, then became the chief architect of the Dump-Joe-for-Kamala movement, which didn’t turn out so well either. The nation was lucky. If Biden had selected his VP partner on presidential potential instead of DEI, Pelosi's ploy might well have succeeded.

The “Fight” book was written by Amie Parnes, a political correspondent for The Hill, and Jonathan Allen, who holds a similar position with NBC News Digital. Both covered the 2024 campaign.

As Biden’s aides did for damage control after the lethally-botched Afghan exit, they offered an emergency exclusive interview to George Stephanopoulos, the former Bill Clinton aide who plays a journalist on ABC News. Neither went well.

Whipple writes: 

Stephanopoulos questioned the president gently, like a grandson. Afterward, when I asked the ABC anchor by email for his impressions, he replied: ‘Heartbreaking up close.’

Perhaps you remember the ensuing hard-hitting ABC News report on the president’s poor interview responses and appearance putting the viability of a second term in doubt. No, you don’t. That never happened.

So, once again, the focus was on the poor, faded old man instead of the fact that Joe Biden squandered in excess of one billion dollars of other people’s money to get an office and take an oath to "faithfully execute" the country's most important job with duties he was clearly no longer capable of performing, including simply signing his own name on legislation.

Then. there’s Chuck Todd, formerly of NBC News, trying to explain the absence of diligent, honest mainstream coverage of the man who had become an incompetent president:

The only thing I can chalk it up to is this, whatever you want to call it, this fear that some members of the media had sometimes — that they would be perceived as helping Trump if they somehow diminished Biden.

That’s a courageous admission and an honest, candid one that reveals why the credibility of mainstream media has sunk to its lowest level ever.

That reporters would collectively withhold an important political truth from customers because they were more concerned about damaging a favored candidate than telling the truth. And likely smudging their own reputation among Dem pols and like-thinking, liberal peers.

That helps to explain legacy media’s long-term lack of coverage of other major scandals that happen to involve media’s favored political party on the left.

The lack of consequences for those serious scandals and the absence of a media drumbeat demanding repercussions for deceitful government players now is a familiar bipartisan phenomenon in Washington. That continues today. 

As Byron York of the Washington Times notes:

There was never a real reckoning with Biden’s condition and all the false statements his representatives and defenders and supporters had made. 

As of now, imposing any consequences for that egregious betrayal of public trust seems left to voters, if enough of us happen to remember this shabby charade come Nov. 3, 2026.