Over at Townhall, Katie Pavlich asks two important questions. First, where is Joe Biden? And second, who is running the country at the moment? The subject arose because people have been looking at the President's schedule as published by the White House. Normally that schedule is sparse with a very early lid on the best of days. But now it's absolutely empty. Biden just came back from a one week vacation in California, but he headed immediately to his mansions in Delaware for another two weeks of rest and relaxation. There is nothing on the schedule after the President's daily briefing each morning and we're not entirely sure that he's even getting those. The Vice President is out on the campaign trail constantly. So we shall ask once again. We're supposedly overseeing two separate wars overseas and wrestling with multiple crises back at home. Who exactly is running the United States?
President Joe Biden left a week long California vacation Monday and headed back to the East Coast. His destination wasn't Washington D.C. or the White House. Instead, he's back in Delaware for an additional two weeks at the beach. His schedule remains blank after receiving the "president's daily brief."
The call time for reporters in Rehoboth, where Biden is staying in his beach house, was pushed to 11 am Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre is also missing in action and has no planned briefings on the schedule. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby held an on-the-record gaggle with reporters Monday, where he was press on Biden's whereabouts.
On top of that mystery, Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre has seemingly disappeared. Her schedule includes no briefings in the coming weeks. The only sound coming from the executive branch at the moment is that of crickets. John Kirby was trotted out to attempt to answer the above questions for a reporter. When he was bluntly asked who is running the country right now, he said it was President Joe Biden. Since there is no evidence pointing to this being true, he attempted to say that Biden has been regularly taking calls from other world leaders and "staying on top of" world events. But normally when world leaders are on the phone with the President, a summary of the call is distributed to the press corps with any potentially sensitive information omitted. Why haven't we seen any of those summaries?
Meanwhile, the few reporters who managed to catch a glimpse of Joe Biden exiting Air Force One in California reported something disturbing. They said that Biden was "visibly shaking" and needed a physical "boost" from Secret Service to even climb into his SUV.
Biden's schedule is absolutely blank. Meanwhile, Emily Goodin reports Biden was "visibly shaking" as he exited AF1 in CA on Tuesday morning, and needed a boost from Secret Service agents just to get into his SUV.
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) August 26, 2024
Who is running the country? https://t.co/bZb8ZjfmpM pic.twitter.com/BrRVme9xCC
Allow me to take a shot at answering both of the title questions here based solely on intuition and recent history. First, where is Joe Biden? The vast majority of the time the answer is that he's on vacation. The physical location doesn't really matter, whether it's some resort or Camp David or on the beach in Delaware. Biden has long since eclipsed the record for the amount of time spent on vacation by any president in modern American history. Even when he's at the White House, he will have at most one or two events on his schedule in the morning and a lid called by lunchtime. Frankly, we've known about his routine for quite a while. But now that he's no longer running for another term, he simply doesn't have to bother pretending anymore.
As to who is running the country, that answer has been the same for at least the past two years also. Unfortunately, we still don't know the names of the people who are specifically taking care of the day-to-day operations, though the country very much deserves to know. Whoever it is or whoever they are, nobody voted for them. That much we can be sure of. It's probably some combination of Ron Klain and Jeff Zients, perhaps with a few others mixed in. We may never know unless someone eventually writes a tell-all book long after this entire crew has ridden off into the sunset on their private jets.
I'm not sure which is less problematic. We have a choice of the country being run by a group of anonymous shadow figures who nobody voted for or having Biden go back to attempting to actually do it himself in his current condition. We can only shudder and imagine what the official schedule will look like if Kamala Harris becomes the President. It will no doubt include some Venn diagrams, though. And perhaps some pictures of a big yellow school bus.
