President Biden’s Cognitive Skills

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) has called repeatedly for President Joe Biden (D) to take a test to determine his cognitive skills. He recently doubled down on that demand by predicting that Mr. Biden would be forced to resign, including the use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution which reads in pertinent part:

“Section 4
“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

The Amendment goes on to describe the process for permanent removal if the President should contest the initial removal.

What makes this interesting is that Mr. Jackson, prior to being elected to Congress was a White House physician during both President Barack Obama’s and President Donald Trump’s presidencies. The mainstream media have virtually ignored Mr. Jackson’s demands and those few that have recognized them insist on referring to Mr. Jackson as the “controversial” former White House physician. In point of fact, Mr. Jackson was a former admiral in the United States Navy who joined the White House medical staff during President George W. Bush’s administration. He served as Physician to the President during both Mr. Obama’s and Mr. Trump’s tenures. The reason the Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media like to refer to him as “controversial” is because of the unproven accusations made by them – the same tactic they used on United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Cavanaugh – you know, one partisan moron makes the accusation and the rest of the partisan morons use it as a pretext for labeling him “controversial.”

But there is a huge problem with Mr. Jackson’s demands for a cognitive test and his prediction of a forced resignation by Mr. Biden. It is a problem that is not uncommon for physicians who are focused on the health of their patients without regard to the greater impact on society. It is the reason that physicians treat prisoners scheduled to be executed without regard to their impending doom. And while a physician might be forgiven for his purposefully narrowed focus, a member of Congress cannot be. A member of Congress needs to be continuously cognitive of the overall impact of their decisions and advocacy. (I realize that such an expectation is largely ignored by members of Congress and that their inattention to that expectation grows as they move up the ranks of power within the Congress – e.g. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX.) But the problem is right there in the constitution and it is not the complex certification and trial process envisioned by the Twenty-fifth Amendment when a sitting president resists removal, it is found in Section 1 of the Amendment:

“Section 1
“In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.”

To move from the academic to the practical, that means that should Mr. Biden be removed from office for whatever reason, Vice-President Karmina Harris (D) will become President of the United States. You might remember that Ms. Harris’ primary claim to fame before her failed candidacy in the 2020 Democrat primary contests, was that she rose from the ranks of a so-so prosecutor to a member of the California Democrat inner circle by virtue of the fact that she carried on a multi-year affair with California’s then married Speaker of the House and political powerhouse Willie Brown (D-CA). The affair ended abruptly when Mr. Brown was elected Mayor of San Francisco and returned to his wife rather than continue the affair with Ms. Harris. Because of her acquired connections in the California Democrat party and with the assistance of Mr. Brown, Ms. Harris moved through the ranks and was eventually elected to the United States Senate beating Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) in the Democrat primary. Ms. Harris’ accomplishments once elected are negligible and she has been forced to tout her “advocacy” rather than her accomplishments on a whole variety of issues.

During the 2020 Democrat primary process Ms. Harris demonstrated a profound lack of knowledge about virtually every important issue, instead focusing on decrying the very existence of Mr. Trump. She would be best described as studiously and intentionally ignorant so as to avoid taking a positions. Although when pressed by other far-left candidates she would spontaneously embrace their most extreme positions without having investigated or understood their breadth. So unpopular was Ms. Harris that she was forced to withdraw from the race before the first primary votes when polls showed that she trailed significantly the other candidates in her home state of California. A state-wide poll conducted by PPIC of California voters in November of 2019 (just prior to Ms. Harris’ exit) showed Mr. Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) all leading Ms. Harris by substantial margins with Ms. Harris submerged in a sea of other losers including Mayor Pete Buttegieg and Andrew Yang.

As Vice-President, Ms. Harris has ducked every difficult assignment handed to her by Mr. Biden including dealing with the overwhelming illegal immigration crises at our Southern border and the fallout, including the incarceration of unaccompanied children in cages with limited sanitary facilities. Thus far she has been assigned “point” on the border crises and on the advancement of the Democrats “voting rights” legislation. There is no visible progress by Ms. Harris on either. For months she refused to visit the Southern border and when the pressure got so great she reluctantly visited El Paso, Texas miles from the area of sustained incursion by illegal immigrants. According to a report from the Washington Examiner:

“Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision to visit the border city of El Paso, Texas, on Friday will keep her 800 miles away from the region that is seeing more than double the normal amount of illegal immigration.

“Lawmakers who have begged Harris for months to visit the U.S.-Mexico border are unhappy about the White House’s plans not to visit the Rio Grande Valley. Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas called the move a ‘politically safe trip.’

“’I’m sure her planners told her that if you’re going to go down to the border, go to something that’s safer to go to, that is, politically safer,’ Cuellar told Fox News in an interview Thursday morning. ‘The epicenter is down there in the Lower Rio Grande, the lower part of my district down there. If you look at the numbers that are down there compared to El Paso, you’re not going to get a true picture of what’s happening.’”

Her only other activities relating to the border crises was a visit to Guatemala where she told gathered reporters that people from Central America should not come to the United States currently – we can see how well that worked. She also had a “virtual visit” with Mexican leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador which Bloomberg described as follows:

“Two hours before his call with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lambasted the U.S. for funneling money to non-profits that have published critical statements about his government.

“’You cannot receive money from another country for political purposes. It’s treason of your country,’ said AMLO, as the president is known, at his daily press briefing on Friday. ‘It’s interference, interventionism, and in favor of a coup.’”

Good job Ms. Harris, I’m sure we can count on the assistance of Mexico in dealing with the border immigration crises.

I noted in last week’s column that in the choosing of a Vice-President, Mr. Obama set a standard followed by Mr. Biden:

“So he [Mr. Obama] selected the dumbest man in the United States Senate – then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE). Given that it was widely believed that Mr. Biden had been wrong on every major issue over forty plus years, Mr. Obama was relatively comfortable that no one would attempt to assassinate him because of the obvious result. And Mr. Biden – no slouch at plagiarism – followed Mr. Obama’s example and chose the dumbest woman in the United States Senate – then Sen. Camilla Harris (D-CA).” [Bracketed words added]

But back to Mr. Jackson. Before you go running your mouth you might want to think about the consequences. Nobody wishes to see Mr. Biden go more than me – but not before the end of his term or the removal of Ms. Harris from the office of Vice-President. Mr. Biden is leading the nation towards the precipice; Ms. Harris will push us over out of sheer ignorance.

This is a reminder to all of us that elections have consequences – some good, some bad and some existential.