All Tapped Out

Jake Tapper's new book, co-written by Alex Thompson, chronicling the so-called cover-up of Joe Biden's lack of fitness to run for another term, reminds me how much I've disliked Tapper (below) since 2017, when he made fun of former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley's tweet comparing the MAGA movement to the Klan and to Nazis and calling on people to fight.  Tapper's and Thompson's book makes the argument that Biden more or less gave the Presidency back to Trump by insisting on running again in 2024 and denying rank-and-file Democrats the chance to find another candidate to take his place, with Democrats in Washington, D.C. concealing his deteriorating physical and mental condition.

In no way am I suggesting that Biden was correct in choosing to stand for re-election in 2024.  I'm not even suggesting that Biden was wrong to do so; given the dearth of appealing candidates who could have competed for the chance to be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee (Gretchen Whitmer, who loves to hide her face behind a binder in embarrassing moments?  Josh Shapiro, who had just been elected governor of Pennsylvania and had no track record yet?  Gavin Newsom, the Gary Hart of Generation X - all style and no substance?), Biden likely felt he had no choice but to run again.   But even though I did believe that he should have stepped down and concluded that he must have known what he was doing once he chose to do otherwise, and therefore I was all in for him until he decided he wasn't all in for us and let Kamala Harris take the reins, none of what Biden did do or should have done has no bearing now.  Tapper and Thompson are only putting out this book to please Tapper's corporate bosses at CNN, who have been making it clear for quite some time that they want to be in solid with Trump, whose own dementia and involuntary napping has been on display for the past four or five years.  Yet no one in the mainstream media seems to want to talk about that.  Since the mainstream press is too busy normalizing Trump, they (and not just CNN in this case) are all too happy to please Trump and MAGA by picking on Biden.

So you can imagine my reaction when it was reported yesterday that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer and can do no more than manage it to keep himself alive.

My sorrow for Biden is only matched by my sense of schadenfreude toward Tapper and Thompson.  They wanted to get in on the lucrative pastime of picking on Joe Biden for making a decision he clearly felt was the right decision at the time - running for a second presidential term in 2024 (and, again, given the possibility of a Newsom nomination, who could blame Biden for his decision?) - and just as their precious book is going to press, Biden's cancer diagnosis makes their book look more like a cynical, venal, disrespectful cash-in than it already did (and was).  Even more so, it makes Tapper and Thompson look unseemly and kind of cretinous.

But, seeing as I don't watch cable news anymore and turn instead to independent podcast media, that's none of my business. 

I wish Joe Biden the best.  Excuse me for not wishing the same to Tapper and Thompson.