TV “doctor” Sean Hannity seems to only have one diagnosis: brain damage. However, with Biden, Hannity has added “Jacked-up Joe” to his pseudo-medical repertoire.
You may recall that “Dr.” Hannity repeatedly and deceitfully “diagnosed” Hillary Clinton as brain damaged during her 2016 presidential campaign against Donald Trump. Funny how I haven’t heard a peep about that since.
If there’s one thing you can say about Hannity, it’s that he’s consistent with his dishonest talking points. Last Thursday night, a typical example, he called Biden “a cognitive mess,” e.g. And more:
HANNITY: [W]e definitely have accurately documented Biden's very troubling cognitive struggles for years, we've been way ahead of the curve, don't expect that Joe Biden that we see on a daily basis to show up at that debate.
This brings us to the legend of Jacked-up Joe. On a rare occasion during an important speech, Biden's demeanor became very different. The mumbling, the bumbling, the stumbling, the fumbling got replaced with screaming, and the confusion was masked by aggression. His heart rate was up, his eyes were bulging, his speech was fast, his behavior was weird, kind of like a kid who had coffee for the first time.
Jacked-up Joe last appeared at the State of the Union address that was back in March. We haven't seen it since. Now, we don't know if it's caffeine, adrenaline, I don't know, or something else. But next Thursday, I fully expect a return of Jacked-up Joe.
Hannity went on to suggest that Biden spending a week prepping for the CNN debate was further proof of his disability.
HANNITY: There are no public events, no meetings, nothing else is scheduled. The president of the United States will simply suspend his pretty important day job for a week to prepare for this debate. Wouldn't it be great to have a president who could actually walk and chew gum at the same time? I know I'm asking for a lot.
Someone that doesn't need an entire week of preparation for a 90-minute discussion? Now we spent many, many hours prepping for the show every day and many hours -- doing three hours of radio every day, I don't know -- I don't know if I can spend an entire week doing preparing for one-hour or two-hour show, it's kind of bizarre.
First of all, the CNN debate is highly consequential, as Hannity well knows. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have spent so much other time in this commentary accusing people of rigging it for Biden, with just the same rhetoric as Trump. Second, it’s not a skill Biden has practiced lately and there’s a lot to it. There’s the ability to answer questions smoothly, knowledgeably and succinctly, many of which will be political and unrelated to the policy, intelligence, military, etc. minutia he is currently steeped in. Also, Biden will have to be prepared for the crap Trump will undoubtedly pull, whether it’s his lies, his attempts at bullying or possibly even threats.
In other words, it’s nothing like preparing for either Hannity’s radio or TV show, where he can say what he wants and to whom he wants. Again and again.
In short, Hannity knows damn well it’s smart for Biden to be well-prepared. Hannity’s probably just nervous that his Bedtime BFF and (presumably) favorite p***y grabber claims his preparation is doing (friendly) interviews.
You can watch Fake Doctor Hannity below, from the June 20, 2024 Hannity.
Little Trump’s performance was his usual barrage of falsehoods and attempts at bullying. And the coverage essentially has said as much.
In other words, Biden having a pretty slow night does not change the fact that Little Trump embarrassed himself. It just means that people are focusing more on the former than the latter.
I will say, though, I don’t think Trump really helped himself much, either.
First of all, it is not unusual for presidents and presidential candidates to spend several days preparing for a campaign debate. This is a tradition that goes back decades. President Obama always took several days prepping with someone playing his opponent on the stage. I recall people commenting in 2012 that they felt that Obama hadn’t prepared enough for his first debate with Romney – something that Hannity tried to pounce on at that time. Ronald Reagan famously spent a lot of time preparing for his debates, which set him up for the canned line he threw at Walter Mondale in 1984 about not using “my opponent’s youth and inexperience against him.” The West Wing went so far as to build a whole episode around the preparation, called “Debate Camp”. So Hannity’s entire premise here is nonsense, and he knows it.
Secondly, the entire Angry Right Wing media machine has repeatedly tried to pressure President Biden by announcing that THIS event, whatever the event is, will be the make or break moment where if he makes a single mistake, that’s it and he’s done. They tried this at the State of the Union, they’ve tried it at each possible public appearance, and now they’re trying again with tonight’s debate.
Thirdly, every single time that President Biden frustrates their expectations and actually delivers, as he repeatedly has at the State of the Union addresses, the response by Angry Right Wingers has been sullen rage, followed by the excuse of “So what? You know, he was JACKED UP on drugs!” Glenn Beck spent the weeks before this years SOTU address predicting that President Biden couldn’t get five words out of his mouth without drifting into senile incoherence. When Biden nailed the SOTU, Beck exploded in a wild tantrum, screaming “What an A#$%$%&!”
It would seem that Angry Right Wingers keep getting confused as to which narrative they wish to play regarding President Biden. Is he a senile invalid who can’t function at all, or is he the secret evil genius who’s about to take over the world? Is he a wimpy old pushover that the world laughs at, or is he this horrible creepy man who supposedly attacks women? I’ll note that most of those Right Wing accusations smack very much of projection about real issues with Little Trump.
I’ve seen that Angry Right Wing media seems similarly confused about how to prep their listeners for tonight’s debate. On the one hand, we’re told that Little Trump is about to completely run over poor little President Biden and that the Right Wing is going to enjoy the pummeling so much. On the other hand, Right Wing voices have spent the last few days suddenly trying to about face and pump up expectations about President Biden – presumably so they can say that he didn’t live up to them. Kind of a neat trick – either they get to tell everyone that they knew all along that President Biden couldn’t perform, or they tell everyone that President Biden fell apart, so that they get a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose scenario going.
Now, it’s entirely possible that Hannity’s hope for tonight will be fulfilled – that Little Trump will somehow suddenly become an incredible debater and President Biden will suddenly be unable to answer Little Trump’s taunts. We’ll just have to see. But we can guarantee that Hannity has already declared the winner. In fact, he declared it over four years ago.
