The mental competence, or lack thereof, of our national leaders has been a major talking point of late, and for good reason. Donald Trump’s mental acuity came into question countless times during his tenure in office and the same questions thrust the 77-year-old’s way are now being aimed at current President Joe Biden. A special counsel looking into Biden’s handling of sensitive documents recently concluded that no criminal charges were warranted, but it released a scathing report detailing the 81-year-old’s lapses in memory.
This gave rabid Republican hobgoblin Marjorie Taylor Greene just the fodder she needed to attack the President’s mental capacity. Fully embracing her role in calling the kettle black, Greene blasted Biden’s supposed “mental incompetence” even as she continues to mispronounce words like “indictable” and support a president who’s grasp of reality frayed into nothingness a few decades ago.
In the fever dream that is the new American reality, however, Greene’s words actually carry some weight. Her trumpeting about the “two-tiered system of justice” and “selective political prosecution” aren’t much more than noise to a good chunk of American voters, but there are those that listen. And, since they’re listening to the likes of Greene, their grasp on reality is getting more and more tenuous.
The fact that Greene sees Biden as “unfit for office” is a surprise to exactly no one, but her attempts to compare Trump and Biden are unexpected, given how bad any examination of Trump’s actions make the former president look. There are many differences between the cases, but the most vital is this: when asked to surrender documents to investigators, Biden complied, while Trump worked to conceal or brush past his involvement.
Biden may have come across as a kindly but detatched old man in his investigation, but Trump came across as criminal in his. Which is worse? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking forward to another four years of near-senility from the well-meaning but past-his-due-date Biden, but that’s a much better option than anything the Republican side of the aisle can cook up. I’ll happily take a forgetful old man’s mistakes over a malicious old dumpster fire’s purposeful obstinance, even if it does lead to another four years of relative inaction. It would be much better than another four of nail-biting stress, constant fears over World War III, and near-daily drama stemming from the oldest toddler ever voted into national office.